RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 
AND CONFESSANTS 




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RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND CONFESS- 

ANTS. 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
THE JESSOP BEQUEST. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND 
CONFESSANTS 



RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 
AND CONFESSANTS ^ ** ^ 

WITH A CHAPTER ON THE 
HISTORY OF INTROSPECTION 



BY 

ANNA ROBESON BURR 
it 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

®bt fites'ito prepg Cambri&ge 
1914 



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COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY ANNA ROBESON BURR 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published May 1Q14 



JUN-2I9I4 



©CLA374291 



"0 this gloomy world! 
In what a shadow or deep pit of darkness 
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!" 

The Duchess of Malfi. 



PREFACE 

It has been the privilege of the writer to do much 
of her work in the library of the late Dr. Henry C. 
Lea — its shelves still laden with that material which 
assumed so significant an aspect under the guidance 
of his distinguished mind. Such surroundings were 
in themselves an inspiration and she is grateful for 
the kindness which procured them. 

Thanks are also due for the courteous co-operation 
of the librarians of the two Friends' Libraries, of the 
Presbyterian and Methodist Historical Societies, of 
the Philadelphia Library, of Haverford College, of S. 
Carlo Borromeo, and of S. Thomas of Villanova. 
Through the kindness of Dr. Jastrow, the University 
of Pennsylvania Library gave the writer access to her 
material all over the country. Such goodwill has lent 
the work an ever-increasing pleasure. 

While reading for an earlier study on autobiog- 
raphy, the writer had been impressed by the present 
superabundance of works on religious and mystical 
theory, side by side with a total absence of any col- 
lation of the documents of personal religion. No one 
has apparently thought it worth his while to examine 
the foundations on which the current elaborate doc- 
trines are based. Some years of investigation have 
resulted in this book. If the work has turned in 
directions not at first anticipated, yet it formulates 



viii PREFACE 

no theory except by induction from the data it fur- 
nishes. In its final position, it agrees with Hobbes, 
when he remarks, — "that ignorant and superstitious 
men make great wonders of those works, which other 
men, knowing to proceed from nature (which is not 
the immediate but the ordinary work of God), ad- 
mire not at all. ' ' 

March, 1914. 



CONTENTS 

I. Introductory 3 

II. Confession and Apologia . . . .19 

III. Introspection: The Introspective Type 71 

IV. The Documents 141 

V. The Data Analyzed: I . 171 

VI. The Data Analyzed: II . . . .229 

VII. The Data Analyzed: III ... 273 

VIII. Mysticism and its Interpretation . . 329 

IX. The Religious Instinct: I 397 

X. The Religious Instinct: II . . . 449 

Notes 491 

Bibliography of Cases .... 527 
Index 549 



RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND 
CONFESSANTS. 

I 

INTRODUCTORY 



RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 
AND CONFESSANTS 



INTRODUCTORY 

One of the characteristics of the present age, so 
often accused of infidelity, is its interest in religion. 
Works upon this subject were never so many in the 
ages of faith. Indeed, one may almost go so far as 
to say that the study of religion is a study essentially 
modern. In the past, men studied dogma, they studied 
theology, they studied metaphysics and mystical phi- 
losophy, but they did not study religion. For such 
study there is necessary not only a knowledge of cer- 
tain basic sciences very recent of date in themselves, 
— such as ethnology and anthropology, biology and 
psychology, — but also the security of our latter-day 
ideals of tolerance. Protected by these, the writer on 
religious topics has been able, for the first time in the 
world's history, to place his matter in perspective for 
proper examination. The strict limitations imposed 
on such work in the past, with the sinister shadow of 
the Inquisition ever ready to fall across his page, 
produced in the writer a fret and a tension which 
caused him too often to be personal and acrimonious in 



4 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

tone, while in statement lie remained safely indefinite. 
To-day, his manner is calmer and less controversial, 
while the nature of his work has tended to become less 
abstract and more concrete, more specialized, and more 
individual. 

The present essay is an attempt to handle, in a 
broad way, some of the more intimate aspects of man's 
knowledge of himself. A chief element of this knowl- 
edge has been his natural interest in the question of 
his ultimate destination, with his concomitant feelings 
and ideas respecting all that part of his nature which 
is unknown to him. This interest in, this curiosity 
about, self, was made the subject of observation and 
theory long before the simplest knowledge of physical 
man had been acquired. But such theory necessarily 
remained a priori for centuries, until the bulk of sci- 
entific facts increased sufficiently to allow of sounder 
methods. 

If sounder method is possible to-day, it must be 
borne in mind that possible is the word. Many diffi- 
culties will occur to the student ; there are many which 
may not occur to him. He will easily recall the names 
of several recent books on religious psychology, and 
he will agree that their effect, on the whole, has been 
far from conclusive, while yet he may or may not 
realize that this impression springs from their funda- 
mental weakness in the matter of data. To do such 
work to-day there is needed, first of all, a definitive, 
systematic collection of the available data of personal 
religious experience, and such a collection may come 
to the rescue of the theorist. 

The material for such data is not wanting; it lies 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

embedded in the recorded history of the human mind 
for over two thousand years. Scattered in a hundred 
corners, it has crumbled with the crumbling edifice 
of succeeding civilizations, and the fragments that re- 
main have been trodden under foot by prejudice, or 
ignored by tradition. Its presence has had little sig- 
nificance for the exact mind, and as to its value, opin- 
ions have fluctuated. Bacon held that * ' as for the nar- 
rations touching the prodigies and miracles of reli- 
gions, they are either not true or not natural, and there- 
fore impertinent for the story of nature." 1 At the 
same time, while he decided that the " narrations which 
have mixture with superstition be sorted by them- 
selves,' ' he yet would not omit them altogether. Our 
modern idea holds rather that "the study of religion 
is essentially psychological. . . . Whatever else can be 
predicated of religion, we must admit that it consists 
of a great variety of mental experiences"; 2 and the 
difficulty of obtaining the facts concerning such 
experience — although acknowledged — constitutes no 
valid excuse for ignoring them. The student must 
simply apply to their examination certain important 
correctives, just as he must apply similar correctives 
to the examination of any mass of facts. He will 
rather repeat the words of Montesquieu: "J'ai 
d'abord examine les hommes et j 'ai cru que, dans cette 
infinie diversite de lois et de mceurs, ils n'etaient pas 
uniquement conduits par leurs f antaisies. ' ' 3 

Thus what appears to be mere chaos, is not so ; and 
through all these passions, characters, and experiences, 
there operates the universal law of the identity of our 
common nature. "The life of the individual, ' ' says 



6 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Caird, " is a sort of epitome of the history of human- 
ity"; 4 and it must he studied from this point 
of view, not forgetting the corrective influence brought 
to hear upon it by the broader outlines of history. 

If opinions as to the value of the material are not 
unanimous, yet there has been no doubt as to the imme- 
diate necessity for its examination. The religious con- 
fession, with which it is the main object of this essay 
to deal, is nothing less than the first coherent, system- 
atic, voluntary attempt at self-study, by which man 
has sought to determine the nature and the limits of 
his consciousness. From this first effort has been 
evolved all later, more complex religious ideas, and 
many of the later philosophic ideas. The confession, 
therefore, would have a vital historical interest for 
us if it had no other. But in reality it has far 
more. It serves to lay bare the fundamental forces of 
history. A recent historian B has made a penetrating 
commentary on the value of the private record as a 
means of understanding public action ; while a recent 
psychologist 6 has observed that the most instructive 
human documents lie along the beaten highway. The 
personal record, in many cases, furnishes the only 
valid means of observing the movement of certain 
minds under the pressure of given circumstances. 7 
Any work upon the development of the idea of sect 
must needs be built upon these documents, whose 
existence alone has made it possible. If any excuse 
were needed for this attempt to bring the alien, 
uncharted matter into the domain of law, it will surely 
be found in the present cry of the scientist for more 
facts. 



INTRODUCTORY 7, 

"II n'y avait point d'emploi plus legitime et plus 
honorable de l'esprit," writes Sainte-Beuve, "que de 
voir les choses et les hommes comme ils sont et de les 
exprimer comme on les voit, de decrire, autour de soi 
en serviteur de la science, les varietes de l'espece, les 
divers formes de 1 'organisation humaine, etrange- 
ment modifiee au moral dans la societe et dans le 
dedale artificiel des doctrines. ' ' 8 

To be the servitor of science, in regard to the study 
of men's beliefs, is, as we have said, an ideal of to-day ; 
yet in saying this, one must not forget that the very 
constitution of the religions preceding Christianity 
admitted of a similar ideal. 

Havet 9 points out that the ancient religions, so ex- 
acting in respect of cult, had comparatively few dog- 
mas, thus leaving open a vast field for those fruit- 
ful discussions which Christianity forbade. In the 
fragments of those discussions which remain to us, 
there is a freshness and often a boldness of concep- 
tion which render them significant and suggestive, 
bringing, as they do, the mind of the ancient student 
closer to the mind of the student of to-day. When 
Manu speaks of self-consciousness and egoism as 
"lordly" he joins in the speech of Schopenhauer or 
Nietzsche. 10 

Both ancient and modern students recognize two 
main approaches to the study of religion. This force 
in human life is manifested in two ways: it may be 
observed in its effect upon the mass, through its group- 
manifestation ; or in its effect upon the individual, 
through its personal, psychological manifestation. 
The gate of the first approach has been open for cen- 



8 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

turies ; philosophers and historians have passed there- 
by, each aiding future generations, though not al» 
ways in the way he expected. The gate of the second 
approach has not yet been opened to the investigator ; 
and the difficulties in the way of a valid study of 
religion in the individual cannot be over-impressed 
upon the reader's attention. 

The perplexing question of fundamental sincerity 
has been dealt with in a preceding volume. 11 When 
the degree of this sincerity has been, relatively speak- 
ing, determined, the student is brought face to face 
with the equally perplexing problem of classification. 
A fair degree of candour in the personal revelation may 
be admitted ; and yet how are the results of such can- 
dour to be rendered amenable to science ? Can they be 
so rendered ? At first sight nothing would seem more 
impossible "than to find law, order, and reason in 
what seems accidental, capricious, and meaningless. ' ' 12 
Nevertheless, no mean authority assures us that this is 
the true work of science; and while he suggests its 
accomplishment by restricting the field, and by limit- 
ing its content as much as possible, Caird adds that, 
while the spiritual life is most complex and difficult to 
understand, yet it must be intelligible ; for, if man can 
comprehend the phenomena of the universe, he should 
surely be able to comprehend his own ! 13 

On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that 
what is fortuitous or casual in itself does not enter 
into the domain of science. Law is only "that con- 
stant rule to which a given order of facts is subservi- 
ent. " 14 It may be determined from observation of 
the facts themselves, when they are properly limited, 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

classified, and compared. The broad general prin- 
ciples of science in regard to this classification and 
comparison must be brought to bear upon this mate- 
rial. Human specimens must needs be subjected to the 
same treatment as botanical or marine specimens. 
They must be gathered, identified, labelled, and made 
accessible to study. And human specimens have this 
permanent disadvantage as specimens, that in the 
nature of things they cannot present data mechan- 
ically consistent. The data are in fact accidental 
and capricious to a degree, varying in different ex- 
amples, but always sufficiently to daunt the orderly 
mind. 

The first task, therefore, must be to determine the 
constant factors in each case, analyze the elements 
thereof, and classify these elements for comparison. 
It has been remarked of the comparative method that 
it can be properly employed only where the things 
compared resemble each other. Yet the things com- 
pared must also differ from one another or there 
would be no need to compare them. The presence of 
a definite religious emotion, then, is the first factor 
whose presence should determine the use of a docu- 
ment for this work. Various as may be the manifesta- 
tions of this emotion, it must exist in a recognizable 
form. 

The second factor, not less important, must be the 
first-hand composition of the document — it must be 
the work of the person himself. Such limitation per- 
mits us to include, beside formal autobiography or 
confession, the material contained in journals, day- 
books, diaries, intimate letters, as well as that which 



10 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

may be found in philosophical disquisition or in theo- 
logical apologia — asking only that it be religious, that 
it be personal, and that it be composed by the subject 
himself. Those " young adventurers who produce 
their performance to the wise ear of Time," 15 have 
equal right to be heard in this regard with the medi- 
aeval mystics or the self -analyzing philosophers, since 
all are moved by the same spirit. 

"Once read thine own breast right, 
And thou hast done with fears; 
Man gets no other light, 

Search he a thousand years. 
Sink in thyself! there ask what ails thee, at that shrine!" is 

And it is with the seekers at this shrine that we are 
here to deal. It would seem obvious that the study 
of religion in its group-manifestation must precede 
and lay the foundation for any study of the individual 
manifestation, yet it were well at the outset to remind 
one's self of this truth. No overcharged attention to 
a task apparently more novel should cause the student 
to minimize the greater relative importance of the 
historical treatment, or to undervalue its effect upon 
the work at hand. The individual may be properly 
understood only through a study of his group, his 
nation, his race. * ' If religion is veritably to be based 
upon experience, ,, Dr. Watson reminds us, "no one 
is justified in citing the partial and fragmentary con- 
sciousness of this or that individual. ' ' 17 He must 
generalize rather from a whole than from a partial 
experience. 

Such work as we are to do in this place must needs 
be supplementary to any broad, general study; and 



INTRODUCTORY 11 

the work and conclusions of the greater religions his- 
torians must take precedence of it, must form its 
proper corrective. By no means does this fact lessen 
the value of an investigation into the individual mind, 
it rather heightens such value. By specialization, a 
service is rendered to all those engaged in generalizing, 
and who are perpetually in search of suitable material. 
In the following pages we shall endeavor to contrib- 
ute to the work of religious investigation an amount 
of data, which has at least the merit of having been 
collated under a salutary method. Should it be im- 
possible to arrive at any conclusions as to the major 
problems presented by the subject, such conclusions 
may, perchance, be suggested to the mind of some 
future investigator. 

Our business, then, to put it briefly as may be, is to 
study, by means of induction through individual ex- 
amples, the manifestation in human life of that force 
to which tradition has assigned the name religion. 
This is no new idea, for just so do we study, by 
means of its manifestations, that physical force to 
which we have assigned the name electricity. Both 
of these forces proceed from unknown and invisible 
causes. Both of them are observable only through 
their direct and indirect effects. Both of them are 
continuously present, though dormant, in the very at- 
mosphere around us; from both of these silent, in- 
visible forces, the proper agent will on an instant 
draw the leaping spark. Our prejudices in the past 
have so hampered us, by attaching a factitious and 
sacrosanct character (almost in the nature of the 
savage tabu) to the manifestations of the force known 



12 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

as religion, that we are much more deficient, scien- 
tifically speaking, in our knowledge thereof. 

We have not weighed it, nor measured it, nor stud- 
ied, in any fulness, the conditions which give rise to 
it, nor noted when we may expect it, and when we 
may not expect it. Our reverence forbade us to 
experiment in the ages when experiment might have 
been of value. But if reverence once hampered us, 
irreverence to-day hampers us still more. The sub- 
ject of electricity and electrical forces does not tempt 
the untrained; nor will the ignorant gather an au- 
dience if he theorize thereon. But upon the obscure 
subject of religion, any fool is sure of an audience 
to his folly. Our irreverence toward our fellow-men 
has cast them helpless into the power of the sciolist 
and the charlatan, who have added to the confusion 
by obscuring the facts. For, upon this vital subject 
there appears to prevail a constitutional inability to 
preserve what Delacroix has called "l'integralite du 
fait." 18 

To the facts, then, and to the facts alone, we must 
turn and return. The subjective can only be reached 
objectively; these cases must be handled in the same 
way as are other natural phenomena. A full list 
must include emotional natures and philosophical na- 
tures, objective types and introspective types, normal 
cases and abnormal cases. Many writers have dealt 
with religion; we shall seek to know the religious. 
Tiny as the individual may be, he is at least a part, by 
means of which the mind may better grasp the whole. 

As for the proposed method, it is similar to that 
now advocated by students of English law. Law had 



INTRODUCTORY 13 

been taught as philosophy was taught, from textbooks 
of broad general principles. Science has to-day 
tended to substitute the inductive method; and from 
groups of cases, the student is now required to in- 
duce a principle and to make the application. There 
is no reason why such method should not be equally 
valid for the study of religion, even though the law 
has the immense advantage in having had its data me- 
chanically collected, for centuries past, into systematic 
records. 

The difficulties in the way of so collecting the reli- 
gious data are very great, but they are not insur- 
mountable ; they but demand a special word of warn- 
ing. The great temptation in all work of this nature 
is to carry it too far. Human specimens are not ma- 
rine specimens, and human cases are not law cases; 
and if it be important that the student should be able 
to see the conclusions they present, it is even more 
important that he should be able to refrain from see- 
ing what is not there. For, when he falls into that 
error, he at once lowers himself to the level of those 
recent writers on mysticism, whose method has thus 
effectually checked all progress in the direction of 
truth. 

There is much to repay the patient collector of 
these facts. In her preface to Obermann, George 
Sand says, most beautifully, that "for all profound 
and dreamy souls, for all delicate and openminded 
intelligences," 19 the rare and austere productions of 
human suffering have an importance even greater 
than that of history. Anything, she adds, which as- 
sists us to understand such suffering must ultimately 



14 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

assist us to ameliorate it. And this voices the stimu- 
lating, the sustaining hope of such an inquiry as the 
present. 

There is need to point out that the inductive method 
may yield a very different result from the selective 
method. It is one thing to evolve a theory, and after 
it has taken shape, to seek for its confirmation by 
means of some ten or twenty carefully selected cases ; 
it is quite another to start without any a priori con- 
ceptions, — simply to gather together all available data 
bearing on the subject, and then to note how the cases 
so gathered may confirm, contradict, or comment upon 
each other. It is one thing to select a special set of 
facts to confirm your special theory; it is another to 
determine which theory will best account for all the 
facts. Through a peculiar misconception as to the 
nature of the material at hand, the first of these 
methods has been used, practically without exception, 
in all work on this subject; and used, moreover, by 
those who must needs have been aware of its technical 
unsoundness. 20 And it is doubtless for this if for 
no other reason that the new religious psychology has 
produced, as a whole, such negligible results. Once 
more we must repeat that a definitive collection of 
the data of religion must needs take precedence of any 
theory. 

The essential difficulty in treating this subject is 
just that it is religion — and religion is the product of 
centuries of emotion, and indissolubly woven into the 
very fabric of the theorist's race and temperament, 
prejudices and traditions. The very word implies 
idealism ; the very conception colors the mind dealing 



INTRODUCTORY 15 

with it. Thus, that writer whose mystical tempera- 
ment inclines him to believe in the influence of this 
force for good, will select his evidence according to 
its beauty and balance ; while that writer whose cyni- 
cal temperament inclines him to believe in the in- 
fluence of this force for evil, will select his evidence 
according to its ugliness and abnormality. One 
writer hopes that doubt will be cleared and faith stim- 
ulated by such investigation; while another believes 
that by the same investigation ancient superstition will 
receive its death-blow. 

No other scientific work seems to strike its roots thus, 
through the intellect, into the obscure depths of heredi- 
tary tendency and emotional bias. It seems too much 
to ask of us — being what we are, the children of our 
fathers — to handle the material bearing on the reli- 
gious life coolly and impersonally. Yet an approach 
to impersonal coolness must be made if any real work 
on this topic is ever to be done. Man, hitherto, 
has made it the battleground of his passions ; surely, in 
this tolerant age, he should be able to go soberly to 
and fro, and decide how much of it is worth his con- 
test. The field lies open to certain fundamental and 
searching queries. What are the manifestations, in 
an individual, of the force we name religion? What 
reasons have we for thinking these particular mani- 
festations are due to that particular force and not to 
some other force? How do we know them to be re- 
ligious? Since we can judge this force only through 
its effects, and since each one of us during his life 
can come into contact with but few of these effects, 
how can we be sure that we are correct in ascribing 



16 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

them to that cause ? What are the recognizable symp- 
toms of the religious experience? 

These are vital questions, and it is worth while to 
attend to them, even if most of us, being what we are, 
should fail to give an answer. At least, we may 
examine the material at hand, since such examination 
is a part of ' * the proper study of mankind. ' ' 

A word as to the plan of approach. Since the mo- 
tive-power of this documentary material lies in cer- 
tain impulses and faculties, which, in themselves, have 
had no small influence over the trend of literature and 
philosophy, the first two sections of this work have 
been devoted to their better understanding. The im- 
pulse toward confession, and the faculty of introspec- 
tion by which such impulse is usually accompanied, 
are here discussed in their broader aspects. The rec- 
ords are next approached through an analysis of their 
main characteristics and are related to the groups or 
sects from which they have emanated. Then the data 
in the records are classified under separate heads, in 
such manner that the reader himself may follow the 
progress of the religious experience in every phase, 
from its first indication to its termination. A thor- 
ough comprehension of underlying conditions, together 
with the cases which they have produced, is essential 
to the reader's grasp of the final, theoretical sections. 
Distinct as these seem in treatment and manner, their 
conclusions are based upon the preceding material — 
without which they must lack stability and authority. 
The bearing of the data on the fundamental question 
of the existence and meaning of religious instinct, is 
the raison d'etre of its collection and of this book. 



II 

CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 



I. 1. Confession in ancient religions, Egyptian, Baby- 
lonian, Islamic, Vedic, Manu. 

2. Buddhistic, Greek, Hebrew. 

3. The early Church, Origen. 

4. Rite of Exomologesis, libelli, Loyola, Abelard, 

Othloh. 

5. Augustin and his imitators. 

6. Port-Royal, Petrarch. 

II. 1. The confessional impulse; publicity as privacy. 

2. Relation of thought and speech. 

3. Power of ideas; exaggeration; Macaulay, Shelley, 

Morley. 
III. 1. The classic apologia. 

2. Rufinus and Jerome; the personal note. 

3. Middle Ages, testamenta, apologies, confessiones. 

4. The mystics and their records. 

5. Hamilton and the Reynolds Pamphlet. 

6. Development of the modern personal apology. 



II 

CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 

Most of us are so well accustomed to the phenomena 
of our conscious being that its common miracles of 
thought and emotion no longer rouse astonishment. 
Now and again, however, one of us will call the others 
to some appreciation of these imperious wonders, as 
Stevenson, when he found the universal ideal of duty 
"strange to the point of lunacy." 1 The uneasi- 
ness of thought concealed, the pain of having some- 
thing " on one's mind," the relief when one is rid 
of it — these rank surely among our most familiar 
mental sensations, without which no one of us can 
live for long. Yet how often do we ask ourselves why 
this should be ? Why is there, for most of us, an un- 
easiness in the fact of concealment, and why does the 
act of confession bring so definite a relief? What is 
the reason that our thoughts are, on the whole, so 
difficult to hide, and so easy to avow ? 

People exist, of course, in whom this impulse counts 
for little ; to whom concealment is more natural than 
avowal. Yet this temperament is rare and is regarded 
as apart from the common human type. And what 
is the reason? Is nature a moralist in this respect, 
laying some vital prohibition on the hiding of the 
truth ? Whence spring those impulses which urge us 

19 



20 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

to tell what we know ? That we are so urged is matter 
of human history, and is traceable long before the time 
religion caused the impulse to crystallize into the 
shape of ritual. 

To-day we associate the idea of confession wholly 
with confession of sin, and with that group of ideas 
concerning penitence and submission. And yet its 
presence in that group is not readily accounted for. 
Has human nature elaborated an idea having a source 
purely artificial and ritualistic; or rather, has ritual 
seized upon and elaborated an idea sprung from a 
fundamental need of human nature? 

To the impulse toward confession and its evolu- 
tion, much in literature is owing, and this fact is a suf- 
ficient warrant to justify any formal enquiry into its 
nature and origin. Nor could there be a better intro- 
duction to such an inquiry than an historical survey 
of its presence in its technical religious form. Brief 
as this survey will be, it should at least serve to con- 
nect in the reader's mind the auricular, with the writ- 
ten confessions of the past; a formal act of penitence 
and submission, with that spontaneous, individual, 
even, if one will, rebellious, movement of the suffering 
human soul. 

The rite of confession of sin in the Christian Church 
has a direct, concrete bearing on the genesis of the 
written confession, and its significance is shown by its 
great antiquity. Public confession of wrongdoing was 
current in the ritual of the ancient religions, although 
holding no such important place therein as it came 
later to acquire in the Christian ritual. The confes- 
sion-idea, however, will be found manifest in some 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 21 

very curious and suggestive forms. In the religion of 
ancient Egypt, for instance, it is connected with that 
elaborate trial of the soul after death of which we 
possess full records. The dead soul was obliged to 
make a curious "plea" or "negative confession, ' ' 
when it came before Osiris and forty-two other judges 
in Amenti. 2 

" I have not told falsehoods, ' ' pleaded the soul, 
awaiting judgment, "I have not done any wicked 
thing. ... I have not murdered. ... I have not 
done fraud to men. . . ." And so on, through a 
catalogue of acts and deeds, ending, ' ' I am pure . . . 
I am pure ... I am pure!" 

This formula appeared to have a cleansing and 
absolving significance, and was evidently not intended 
to be taken literally. Then followed a positive confes- 
sion addressed to the gods of the underworld. " I 
live upon rigHt and truth," the soul declared. . . . 
"I have performed the commandments of men. . . . 
I have given bread to the hungry man . . ." 3 And 
the same idea was repeated in a litany or hymn to 
Osiris, which formed part of the ceremony of the 
soul's reception. Each verse ends, "For I am just 
and true, I have not spoken lies wittingly nor have 
I done aught with deceit." 4 After such formulae the 
soul was weighed and admitted. 

The Babylonian religion had a conventionalized 
form of confession which does not appear to have 
expressed any individual appeal, although the Baby- 
lonian penitential hymns contain certain forms of con- 
fession of suffering, wherein the supplicant, who has 
failed to fulfil the law, bewails his sin. 5 But there 



22 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

is little likeness to any modern spiritual confession in 
these forms, nor in that avowal of guilt which was 
required by the ritual of Zoroastrianism. 6 The faith 
of Islam is too objective to make any such requirement 
of confession of sin as it made of fighting for the 
Prophet. The Koran makes but an insignificant ref- 
erence to this spiritual need; and in truth, humility 
was not insisted upon by Mahomet save under certain 
special conditions. It is interesting to contrast Islam, 
in this respect, with the various religions of India, 
whose deeply introspective character caused them to 
lay great stress on the idea of self-examination and 
confession of sinful act and thought. 

This is clearly developed in the collections of Sacred 
Books. Manu says : "In proportion as a man who has 
done wrong himself confesses it, even so far is he 
freed from guilt as a snake from its slough. ' ' 7 There 
will also be found in one of the Vedas (the ceremonial 
code of the Brahmans) the statement that, "when con- 
fessed, the sin becomes less because it becomes 
truth." 8 The Mahavagga of the Palis contains the 
sentence: "For this is called progress in the dis- 
cipline of the Noble One [i.e., the disciple of Buddha] , 
if one sees his sin in its sinfulness, and duly makes 
amends for it, and refrains from it in future. ' ' 9 

Upon the idea of the value of self-examination were 
founded the practices of the Buddhist "Samgha" — a 
confraternity of monks, who, at stated intervals, made 
confession one to another according to a fixed form. 10 
Such a rite is familiar to the Christian, who will not 
have forgotten that it is advocated by St. James, in no 
uncertain words. 11 To find that the earlier Buddhist 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 23 

doctrines had so clear an idea of the need for self- 
study and confession as an aid to religious develop- 
ment, would seem to prove that the religions of India 
had passed through their subjective period long before 
the Western world came into contact with them ; 12 and 
before such ideas as these crystallized into mere for- 
malism. The naturally introspective cast of the Orien- 
tal mind tended to adopt all such religious practices, 
although they have later developed the more mystical 
at the expense of the less. 

Definite public confession was enjoined by the 
Greeks under certain circumstances, when it was ad- 
dressed to an oracle or to a priest. "In the days of 
Socrates," recounts Plutarch, "Lysander consulted 
the oracle at Samothrace, and was told by the priest to 
confess the worst actions of his life. 'Is it thou who 
commandest this/ he asked, 'or the gods?' The 
priest replied, ' It is the gods. ' ' Then at once retire, ' 
said Lysander, ' that I may answer the gods ! ' ' ' 13 

This anecdote displays a typical situation as re- 
gards the confession; i.e., the priestly effort to make 
use of it as a weapon for the benefit of the hierarchy, 
with the ensuing resentment of a certain kind of 
penitent. Moreover, it is precisely this Lysander-type 
whose influence has been set against the practice from 
the beginning and continues until the present day. A 
masterful man is willing to confess to God, but not to 
the priest; and had there been more examples of this 
temperament, the control of the confessional would 
have lapsed more slowly into priestly hands. Early 
ideas of submission and of discipline, with the early 
lack of individualism, made this control inevitable; 



24 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

but that Lysander and his like existed and must be 
reckoned with, cannot be ignored when the origin of 
the written confession is to be discussed. 14 

From very early times, the Jews made confession 
on the eve of Day of Atonement. The form which 
they recited differs little from that employed by Chris- 
tianity; and involved an act of atonement, just as, 
later on, the penitent will be found making a rich gift 
to the Church. But the Hebrew confession was less in- 
dividual than national; the people, as one penitent, 
could and did make confession of their sin. 15 From 
the evidence of the Old Testament, this movement 
seems to have sprung from a deep and spontaneous 
emotion of patriotism; and its impressiveness had, 
doubtless, much to do with its later influence over 
the penitential system of the Church. The emotional 
Aramean, who beat his breast and confessed his sin, 
presented a more vivid picture of remorse than the 
pagan world was accustomed to behold. Thus, many 
of the rites and f ormulas, which served to heighten the 
emotional appeal of Christianity, were retained there- 
in, despite their origin. 

The Jewish confession does not seem to have been 
often a written document; but preserved its public 
and national character. Unquestionably, this was at 
first also the character of the Christian confession. 
It was enjoined by the Church as a public, penitential, 
and disciplinary formula, without any individual sig- 
nificance whatever, and this fact must be remembered 
when the reader plunges into the vast literature of the 
Christian ritual. There was no need for Lysander to 
protest in those days. By the time public confession 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 25 

of sin had become a regular sacrament of the Church, 
its disadvantages were manifest and its use had begun 
to create scandal; while to regularize the practice by 
private confession had become inevitable. 10 The pe- 
riod of transition, according to scholars, is somewhat 
vague ; for the Church long wavered between her defi- 
nite dogmatic necessities and the authority of certain 
texts, which, though clear in their general meaning, 
were yet not specific. 17 

In the first and second centuries confession pre- 
ceded baptism. "The pardon symbolized by the 
baptismal rite," says Dr. Lea, 18 "was only to be 
earned by a cleansing of the heart, confession of sin 
to God and earnest repentance. . . ." This confes- 
sion, which was supposed to be public and voluntary, 
was to be rewarded by a mitigation of that penalty 
which the sinner incurred as discipline, at the hands 
of the Church. 19 Nor would the Church, even at this 
date, have permitted so high-handed an action as that 
of Lysander : she was already jealous of her authority. 
"Public confession and public penance were the only 
process then recognized by the Church ;" while Ori- 
gen 20 in his "Homilies" recommends the penitent to 
lay bare his soul to some expert in whom he has confi- 
dence. 

It appears to be the influence of Origen, rather than 
the action of Pope Calixtus, which systematized defin- 
itively the rite of confession. The former had in- 
stituted it in 218 a.d. ; 21 but the rite of Exomologesis, 
as it is called, and as it appears in the old Armenian 
service-books, was but a repetition of the rite of bap- 
tism, involving confession, but involving much else 



26 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

beside. The confession-idea, in reality, was therefore 
but a part of the whole penitential system — it had no 
such importance as it afterwards received, and some 
historians even make no separate mention of it. 22 
Origen planned the different steps and stages of pen- 
ance as "contrition, satisfaction, and self -accusation 
or confession." 23 During the transition period, to 
which we have just alluded, this confession varied. 
Sometimes "it was private before the bishop or priest, 
sometimes public before the whole congregation, 
Public confession was demanded of persons who were 
guilty of grievous public sins" ; unless the recital of 
such sins would tend to create scandal. In other 
words, the bishops were required to use their own 
judgment; in special cases they are found consulting 
their diocesan counselor, or asking the advice by 
letter of their brother-bishops. 

Such was the situation regarding confession of sin, 
in which the penitent Christian convert of the first 
and second centuries found himself. The public re- 
cital of his crimes was no doubt even then largely con- 
ventional, consisting, as it now does, in the repeti- 
tion of a set formula. But his vital offences were 
obliged to have a private hearing ; and this latter prac- 
tice so personal, so intimate, fed the Church's growing 
need of power to knit together her isolated con- 
gregations. For this reason, if for no other, the 
practice of auricular private confession was encour- 
aged. 24 Yet so many of the devout shared the objec- 
tion of Lysander that progress in this direction was 
felt to be provokingly slow; the cases remaining 
scanty, indeed, even in the third century. 25 The 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 27 

custom was held to be salutary for the penitent, and a 
wholesome exercise in the development of self-re- 
straint, but since Dr. Lea writes that it was far from 
common as late as 850 a.d., one may judge of its in- 
frequency in the days of Augustin. 

The name of the great Bishop brings us without 
further parley to the immediate point of departure 
between the spoken and the written confession. 
While his influence on the latter is profound, it formed 
but a part of his general influence on the whole pen- 
itential system of the Church; while the breadth and 
force of this personal and intellectual influence is 
difficult to overestimate. "In the Decretum of Gra- 
tian, no less than 607 canons are taken from his works. 
St. Paul furnished but 408. It was on Augustin 
rather than on Paul that the schoolmen built. " 26 So 
writes the historian, not omitting to note that in the 
1 ' Conf essiones, ' ' Augustin had laid a foundation upon 
which not only the Church, but the whole world of 
thought was to build. 

The modern student of philosophy 27 sees in Augus- 
tin "a virtuoso of self -observation and self -analysis " ; 
and to the open-minded reader his greatest book is 
charged with the vital power of literary genius, and 
full of the zeal and color with which genius informs 
a new idea. This literary quality must not be for- 
gotten, because it is a factor only recently acknowl- 
edged as responsible for the book's success. To find 
in publicity all the sacredness of the confessional, is 
Augustin 's new idea; and his genius pours forth his 
sin and his humility, his love and his joy, ' ' in the ears 
of the believing sons of men." While it is easy to 



28 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

realize the effect upon the sensitive mind of such con- 
fidences as these, and to understand how literature at 
large came to regard them, yet their immediate result 
was not literary but theological, heightening the im- 
portance of Exomologesis in the eyes of the Church. 

There has never been a shorter and more inevi- 
table road to power than that furnished by the confes- 
sional. 28 The rule laid down by Gregory of Nyssa 
"mitigated all penance to those persons who volunta- 
rily revealed any sin not before known, and who sought 
a remedy." 29 Gradually the practice became regular- 
ized after the penitent had been taught the means of 
duly expressing his humility. The word confessio 
meant also memoria, the burial-place of a martyr, or 
the shrine of a reliquary ; and in this manner the idea 
of revealing something precious and hidden became 
identified with the idea of a self-revelation. 

It is not easy to state when the practice of writing 
the confession developed; doubtless in the beginning 
it was the necessary result of the distances which 
separated the members of those early isolated con- 
gregations. Libelli (as these written records were 
called) came to be read aloud in church to spare the 
personal mortification of the penitent. 30 St. Basil, 
who advocated this custom, states that he received such 
a written record from a woman in Caesarea, of high 
rank but very evil life, — who, in this manner, laid con- 
fession of her sins before the Lord. 31 

In the ninth century, Robert of Le Mans, when sick 
unto death, sent a written statement of his sins to the 
Bishop, and received absolution in the same way. 32 
But by the thirteenth century the written records were 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 29 

forbidden, and the rule finally established that all con- 
fession must be auricular. Dr. Lea, however, reminds 
us that the practice itself did not become annually ob- 
ligatory on the faithful until the year 1216, in the 
reign of Pope Innocent III. 33 

With the history of auricular confession this study 
has little to do. After it has been related to the 
special document with which it is our business to 
deal, the evolution of the practice does not greatly con- 
cern us. The fathers differed widely in their opinion 
of its value, and these opinions furnish a suggestive 
commentary upon their personalities. Abelard is not 
sure it is always desirable ; St. Bernard is never weary 
extolling its virtues. 34 Long after private confession 
had superseded the older public form, that form sur- 
vived when men made confession to one another, in 
crises where no priest was to be had. 35 This act had 
the warrant of St. James, and more than one autobiog- 
raphy of the Middle Ages make mention of the oc- 
currence. ' * When the expected day of battle came, ' ' 
writes Loyola, "he made his confession to one of the 
nobles who had often fought by his side, and who, in 
turn, also confessed to him. ' ' 36 To a similar impulse 
is due Abelard 's letter, "Historia Calamitatum ,, ; 
while Abbot Othloh of St. Emmeran writes a detailed 
account lest death should prevent him from making a 
full oral confession. 37 No better proof could be given 
of the penitent's deep humility and sincere repent- 
ance. Other mediaeval expedients show the depth of 
this feeling. The nun, Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, 
was used to kneel in the chapel and, after repeating 
certain psalms, to recite aloud her faults of the day, 



30 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

addressing herself directly to God. In a phraseology 
full of touching humility and beauty, she accused her- 
self of negligence and of preoccupation with things 
of the flesh. Her very simplest thoughts, she felt, 
were wholly unworthy of her Lord. "Deja, mon 
Dieu, la nuit arrive, et je n'ai rien fait encore sans 
vous offenser ! " 38 was her avowal. And no doubt 
there were many to follow her pious example. 

The intensity of this desire to confess will be felt 
by even the most casual student of these days. Au- 
gustin's influence, both literary and theological, had 
been to vitalize all penitential practices with the 
breath of emotion, and to stimulate them by his liter- 
ary genius. His work lent the penitent a sacredness 
which he has not lost even to-day ; a sacredness which 
Augustin felt to be inherent in his own humility and 
love of the Divine. No cold array of dogmas could 
possibly have roused the sinful man to a sense of his 
sinfulness, as does this personal contact with the soul 
of another man who is at once his fellow-sinner and 
his guide. What the Church owes Augustin on this 
one count is incalculable, since he provided a means 
whereby the Lysanders of this world may be brought to 
their knees without a loss of self-respect. That there 
are yet other sources affecting both the production and 
the character of these documents, cannot be forgotten, 
and they are to receive, in their turn, full considera- 
tion at our hands. Yet, when all is said and done, it 
may be doubted if they are more powerful than the 
personal appeal of the "Confessions." The author's 
understanding of human nature is equal to his pity, 
and both are based on real experience. No figment of 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA SI 

life had he lived — the Bishop of Hippo ! He knew the 
horror of the sinner and the exaltation of the saved. 
He had realized to the full a Vedic saying, "that, 
when confessed, the sin becomes less, because it be- 
comes truth" : and he felt in his own proper person the 
"purifying influence of public confession " by which 
"hope in lies is forever swept away." 39 

In treating his "Confessions" as a perfect type of 
this document, one desires to do away with those 
clouds which the misinterpretation of centuries has 
caused to dim its brilliant surface. Perfect con- 
fession is indeed rare and difficult and distrusted of 
men. According to Ramon de Penafort it must be 
1 ' bitter, speedy, complete, and frequent. " 40 So hard 
is it for an active, objective mind to grasp the princi- 
ples of self-examination that it tends to confuse the 
practice with an unhealthy self-depreciation. Along 
with reverence for Augustin, distrust of Augustin's 
introspection has gone hand in hand for centuries, 
and it has so permeated many minds that we find the 
edition prepared for general reading has most of the 
self -study expurgated. It is a shock to the Church, it 
is a shock to the average reader, to find so great a 
figure making an avowal of this and that, with such 
a great humility. But to another type of mind this 
avowed kinship is as the breath of life; nor can Au- 
gustin have lacked the knowledge that herein lay the 
great value of his work. No book has been more 
studied, and to less purpose; no book has been more 
read, and is less really known. The world, for a 
thousand years and more, has tried to open these doors 
without a key. Just as in the case of Jerome Cardan 's 



32 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

very different but equally candid life, 41 the world has 
been obliged to wait until science gave it both the facts 
and the knowledge of how to apply them, which it 
needed to elucidate the writer's statements. 

Meanwhile, a mountain of exegesis, criticism, and so- 
called interpretation has been piled upon the "Con- 
fessions." The favorite attitude of critic and com- 
mentator insists that the "Confessions" are not auto- 
biographical at all and were never intended by the 
author to be thought so. The Church is very strong 
upon this view, chiefly, it would seem, to preserve the 
great Father's sanctity; and in order that the vulgar 
shall not have the satisfaction or the scandal of be- 
lieving that he lied, or stole, or dwelt "in a chaldron 
of unholy loves." As he is St. Augustin, argues the 
Church, he cannot have done these things. He must 
have exaggerated his trifling peccadilloes, because we 
have canonized him. The logic here is the logic of the 
cleric, but its effect has so deeply permeated the his- 
tory of the subject as to have an unfortunate result 
for the written confession in general. For Augus- 
tin 's supposed exaggeration has, of course, been made 
a text for the exaggeration of his followers, without 
the ehurehly reasoning being taken into account. 

Quite apart from questions of hierarchical policy, 
Augustin has suffered, with many another, from that 
passion of the commentator for the involved, indirect 
explanation, invented by himself, instead of the 
simple, direct explanation furnished by the words 
of the subject. 42 Even in the English standard edi- 
tion, the translator is found to have made the impor- 
tant discovery that the "Confessions" are only "con- 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 33 

fessions of praise.' ' This is based on an observation 
of Augustin in his exposition of the Psalms, that 
1 ' Confessions of sin all know, but confessions of praise 
few attend to." These words, together with the un- 
dercurrent of worship and praise carrying along the 
music of the prose, satisfy this editor that Augustin 
did not intend to tell all about himself. 

One is roused in these latter days to a weary im- 
patience when it comes to combating such artificial 
views as these, but it must be done, since they prevent 
us from seeing our subject as it really is. From 
the standpoint of reverence — which should have 
weight with many — it would seem very little to listen 
and believe what Augustin tells us. We know his 
heart to beat with ours, we have the best of human 
reasons to feel his truth and his sincerity; let us be 
confident, then, that he did what he says he did, and 
that he confessed his sins when he declares that he 
confessed them. The words are there in all their 
poignancy, and the man who wrote them did not write 
for the purpose of hiding his real meaning. More- 
over, it is not difficult to decide whether or not the 
11 Confessions " form a genuine autobiography. We 
have but to compare the body of facts which the book 
contains with the body of facts obtainable from other 
sources. If the book be not intended as an autobiog- 
raphy, then these facts will necessarily be fewer and 
less essential than the outside facts; and we should 
be able to gain just as clear a picture of the man if he 
had never written any confessions at all. 

A rapid examination of the different chapters will 
show, better than any words, how exceedingly rich 



34 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

they are in personal data. In his first book Augustin 
presents a minute analysis of his childish development, 
not omitting such details as his prayer to God that 
he might not be flogged. 43 Book II contains a study 
of the crisis of puberty; and after that a careful 
description of his education. 4 * Book III opens with 
one of the most striking pictures in all literature of the 
effect of life and art upon a vivid, youthful imagina- 
tion; its new joy in ideas, and chiefly in the drama, 
whence came, he declares, "my love of grief s." 45 If 
his purpose, indeed, was not primarily autobiograph- 
ical, why these analyses ? Whence these details ? They 
serve no purpose in the scheme of a "confession of 
praise.' ' Let the reader compare them with Rous- 
seau ; or their vitality of ideas with the similar youth- 
ful vitality displayed in such letters as those of Shel- 
ley 46 or the young Goethe, and he will see that the re- 
ligious purpose has not been allowed to interfere with 
the intention of sincere self -study. Later, in depicting 
his period of temptation through the senses, Augus- 
tin 's self -observation is remarkably full and valuable. 
He tells of his indifference to perfume, his fondness for 
music, his delight in beautiful imaginings and colors, 
and "that vain and curious longing' ' which he terms 
the "lust of the eye for things hidden." 47 There are 
similar details given in such highly secular studies as 
Cardan's, 48 and the "De Profundis" 49 of Oscar 
Wilde, and for the same reason, i.e., that the writer 
may he known to the reader as he really is. Augus- 
tin's whole book, in truth, loses meaning if it be re- 
garded in the sense insisted upon by the religious world 
as that of a mere penitential handbook of prayer and 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 35 

praise. Such prayer and praise it contains in full 
measure, 50 but they are intended to be secondary and 
should be so regarded. 

Moreover, the power and influence of Augustin 's 
"Confessions" over the world of literature has been 
maintained for no other reason than their sincerity 
and truthful information. Prayer and praise have 
their own beauty and place, but they make no such 
universal appeal to man as do the works which add 
to his stock of knowledge. In vain has the Church 
warned the faithful that he must not dare to suppose 
Augustin lived in sin simply because he says that he 
did; the human heart knows better. It knows that 
for one exaggeration of an error, a man will write 
ten understatements. It feels exactly what Augustin 
meant when he cried out to God; "Accept the sacri- 
fice of my confession by the agency of my tongue. ' ' 51 
And it echoes and reechoes the words of his humility 
through all the years to the present, when yet another 
sinner repeats them: "A man's very highest moment 
is, I have no doubt, when he kneels in the dust and 
beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life. ' ' B2 

"What, then, have I to do with men that they should 
hear my confession ? ' ' Augustin asks of future genera- 
tions. "A people curious to know the lives of others, 
but slow to correct their own. ' ' 53 To-day we wonder 
if his wildest dreams showed him to what extent this 
estimate was true. The effect of the "Confessions" 
during certain eras became a sort of spiritual conta- 
gion ; and a volume would be all too small to hold its 
manifestations. Of M. de Saint-Cyran the Port-Roy- 
alist, we read, for instance, that he "plunged and re- 



$6 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

plunged, lost himself in this writer. ' ' 54 Sainte-Beuve 
speaks with weariness of "toute cette serie d'ouvrages, 
qui sont les ' Confessions ' de St. Augustin seculari- 
sees et profanees"; 55 while he compares its influence 
in literature to one other only, — that of the man with- 
out God, Montaigne. 

In one of the most beautiful of his familiar letters, 56 
Petrarch describes the effect upon himself of an ex- 
perience which in his day was practically unique, the 
ascent of a mountain. For us to-day, who rejoice in 
the large freedom of nature, to whom no peak ap- 
pears unconquerable, it is hard to realize what such an 
action meant in the fourteenth century. Petrarch's 
ascent of Mont Ventoux has been called an "epoch- 
making act, ' ' but our modern mind finds itself less in- 
terested in the deed than in the thoughts which the 
poet took with him to that windy height. ' ' At first, ' ' 
he writes, "owing to the unaccustomed quality of the 
air and the effect of the great sweep of view ... I 
stood like one dazed. I beheld the clouds under our 
feet, and what I had read of Athos and Olympus 
seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same 
thing from a mountain of less fame. . . . Then a new 
idea took possession of me, and I shifted my thoughts 
to a consideration of time rather than place. 'To- 
day it is ten years since, having completed thy youthful 
studies, thou didst leave Bologna. ... In the name of 
immutable wisdom, think what alterations in thy char- 
acter this intervening period has beheld V ... I am 
not yet in a safe harbor where I can calmly recall past 
storms. The time may come when I can review in due 
order all the experiences of the past, saying with St. 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 37 

Augustine, 'I desire to recall my foul actions and the 
carnal corruption of my soul, not because I love them, 
but that I may the more love thee, my God ! ' ' ' 57 
How naturally did these words of Augustin rise in 
Petrarch's heart, — how readily did he yield himself to 
that poignant influence ! ' ' I rejoiced in my progress. ' ' 
he proceeds, "mourned my weaknesses, and commis- 
erated the universal instability of human conduct. 
. . . The sinking sun and the lengthening shadows of 
the mountain were already warning us that the time 
was near at hand when we must go. . . . While I was 
thus dividing my thoughts, now turning my attention 
to some terrestrial object that lay before me, now rais- 
ing my soul, as I had done my body, to higher planes, 
it occurred to me to look into my copy of St. Augus- 
tine's 'Confessions,' a gift that I owe to your love, 
and that I always have about me. ... I opened the 
compact little volume, small, indeed, in size, but of 
infinite charm, with the intention of reading whatever 
came to hand. . . . Where I first fixed my eyes it was 
written : — .'And men go about to wonder at the heights 
of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, 
and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the 
ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves 
they consider not' " It would seem to us who read 
these words that the revelation which came on the top 
of Mont Ventoux to the first of modern men is hardly 
less important than that which came to the lawgiver 
on Sinai. All about him were spread the glories of 
this world, and they were as nothing compared to the 
wonder of self. ' ' I closed the book, ' ' he adds, ' ' angry 
with myself that I should still be admiring earthly 



38 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

things, who might long ago have learned even from 
the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but 
the soul. ... I turned my inward eye upon myself, 
and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips 
until we reached the bottom again. Those words had 
given me occupation enough. . . ," 58 

In this passage the world may almost be said to come 
of age; the mind of man, if we permit Petrarch to 
personify it for us, attains maturity. The touch of 
Augustin has led many another to that threshold since, 
but no one has described the crisis more beautifully. 

"The face of all the world is changed, I think, 
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul 
Move still, oh, still, beside me . . ." 59 

has been the cry of the devout heart to the Bishop 
of Hippo, from almost every reader of his great ' ' Con- 
fessions.' ' Later in his life, Petrarch definitely imi- 
tates them, and, by the practice of self-examination, 
"laid open the secret uncleanness of my transgres- 
sions/' 60 not once but many times. And from Pe- 
trarch 's day it shall be our task to mark the footsteps 
of the saint, as he walks through these pages beside 
the souls of men. 

With the appearance of Augustin 's book, a means 
was indicated to the sincere and introspective man, 
whereby he might, as it were, make his confession di- 
rect to God. Such a man must have felt very early 
the inadequacy, for his soul's needs, of the auricular 
confession; and that he did so feel is shown by 
the rapid growth of the written record. Dr. Lea 61 
has fully determined (though the question is somewhat 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 39 

beside our present business) that the salutary effect 
of confession largely ceased when addressed in private 
to a single priest. Too much power had been deliv- 
ered into priestly hands; while the confession itself 
tended to lose spontaneity. Similar objections may 
be raised to the questionnaire method in general, 
wherever it obtains, and whether it be applied by re- 
ligion or by science, by the confessor, or by the psy- 
chologist. 62 

But at the moment this question does not concern 
us. What we wish to emphasize is the recognition 
by Augustin, in the fourth century, of a fundamental 
psychological fact, and his own admirable use of it 
for the purpose of leading souls to God. From this 
recognition we may date the appearance, in litera- 
ture, of the ' ' Conf essant ' ' himself. The term is used 
and sanctioned by Bacon in order to escape the 
ambiguity of the word ' ' Confessor, " which, as we have 
seen, may indicate both the penitent and the priest to 
whom the confession is addressed. From this time on, 
we shall make use of Bacon's term in discussing the 
person with whom it is the object of this book to 
deal. The confessant, as he appears in these pages, 
is personally, at least, the direct result of the influence 
of Augustin. 

That human impulse to "cleanse the stuff 'd bosom 
of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart, ' ' 63 
first really understood by the Bishop of Hippo, is re- 
sponsible for more than one philosophic and literary 
tendency. Reading the "Confessions" from this 
point of view, the author's subtlety of understanding 
seems freshly amazing, so does it outrun the develop- 



40 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

merit of the surrounding civilized world. Modern to 
the last degree, both in its expansions as in its reti- 
cences, it proves at least the familiarity of the idea 
of self-study to the more cultivated minds of that 
time. Dr. Lea has exhaustively portrayed the 
Church's effort to utilize this human impulse in a 
social-religious attempt to bind together its congrega- 
tions; but he nowhere suggests that such an attempt 
was other than instinctive. It seemed simply a part 
of the natural effort at unification, for the purpose of 
self-preservation. If we know all about each other's 
sins and errors, then we must stand and fall to- 
gether. A solidarity is at once formed, based on 
mutual understanding and mutual leniency, and this 
solidarity was the pressing and immediate need of the 
Church for several centuries. Later conditions tended 
to conventionalize this idea into a ritual, but in this 
universal human impulse the Church found a weapon 
which it did not scruple to use for its own purposes 
and the purposes, supposedly, of Heaven. 

How may one best define this universal human im- 
pulse? Though we know it to be influential upon al- 
most all branches of literature, yet, by scholars, it has 
been practically ignored. "All men have a natural 
impulse to communicate their inward feelings and sen- 
sations,' ' writes a modern investigator. "The desire 
to 'tell all about it' produces intense satisfaction of the 
emotions. Suppression of it involves a tension . . . 
and a general uneasiness. Criminals are not seldom 
led by this impulse to confess offenses committed long 
before. This impulse is quite a normal one, and be- 
longs in some measure to every man." 64 The writer 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 41 

adds that in poets and artists this feeling is apt to be 
intensified, although he does not tell us why ; and our 
ease-list more or less confirms his observation. In the 
simple fact of suppression, involving tension and un- 
easiness, lies the whole religious situation of the con- 
verted individual. 

The practice of written confession, as we have seen, 
composed in heart-searching privacy, permits the con- 
fessant to gain all the benefit, all the exaltation, of 
the confession-idea, without the humiliation attend- 
ing upon the auricular form; it encourages self -disci- 
pline and self-knowledge, without weakening the in- 
dividual will. So long as the Church, recognizing the 
soul's impulse to "tell all about it," made use of that 
impulse for the health of the soul itself, just so long 
was a direct means provided for a human need. 
But the moment that the Church began to use the 
confession-idea, if only partially, for its own bene- 
fit and that of its confessors, at once the practice de- 
generated into tyranny of a peculiarly hateful sort. 
No necessity is there to repeat in these pages the de- 
tails of that tyranny and the protests against it ; 6B 
the reader sees for himself at once that the independent 
mediaeval mind must needs have found another chan- 
nel for its impulse to "tell all about it." Even Au- 
gustin, in the fourth century, knew this; and under 
his influence the written confession sprang into being, 
supplying in a measure the place of that general, 
public avowal which prevailed in the naif beginnings 
of the early Church. 

For public opinion — to which such a record is con- 
fided — is safer than the seal of the confessional. 



42 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Men may securely tell their sins to a collective body 
of their fellow-men; such confidence presupposes a 
very sacredness of privacy. That this paradox is 
true is proven by the nature of some of the sins thus 
entrusted to the printed page, by such confessants as 
Abelard 66 and Cardan, such self -students as Ben- 
venuto Cellini and Rousseau. The feeling which 
realizes that this privacy is real because it is also 
publicity, forms a part of the autobiographical inten- 
tion toward sincerity, which is one of the basic ideas 
of self -study in autobiography. 67 

The origins of the written confession, therefore, are 
seen to be social, literary, and psychological ; and these 
must receive due consideration, since the religious self- 
study is in a measure evolved from all of them. At 
the moment, our purpose is but to establish the con- 
nection between the ritual and the document, with 
the effect on both of the work of Augustin. "When 
that original, human impulse to ■ ' tell all about it ' ' had 
familiarized itself with a form of expression provided 
for its aid by the builders of the early Church, a 
fresh impetus was given to all similar forms. Hence 
Augustin 's "Confessions" introduced to the confes- 
sion proper the autobiographical intention and idea. 
It was plain that a full sincerity involved giving the 
complete history of the subject, the sources of his sin, 
the progress of his conversion-process. A definite 
plan of self-study thus came to be formulated. Au- 
gustin not only taught this self -study to be full and 
sincere, but furnished an imperishable classic by the 
way of example, and one which was to be followed by 
the most enthusiastic imitation. Through him, the 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 43 

religious record became the natural means of expres- 
sion for the emotions of the Middle Ages. 

Since the day of the Bishop of Hippo, the further 
evolution of this type has been comparatively slow. 
Already has it been noted that the derivation of the 
confession-idea from paganism was hardly more than 
formal; and that in the more ancient religions it 
lacked both in vitality and personal appeal. Its 
vital conception is purely the flower of Augustin's 
genius. Modern exponents have added but little: 
more facts, perhaps ; a clearer understanding of what 
was seen ; better comparison in the matter of case and 
case; nothing more. There are more minds of an 
introspective cast to-day, owing to the tendency and 
development of modern thought, yet their records 
have added but little to the form bequeathed by 
Augustin. His fascination over their imaginations 
has endured for nearly one thousand years, while his 
method of self-revelation has proved more satisfying 
than that of the confessional. To its disciplinary 
effect, since it requires an equally stringent self-ex- 
amination, there are many to testify; while the ugli- 
ness of the written sin constitutes no light penance for 
the sensitive mind. 

Many temperaments are aided and uplifted by this 
act of confession; it is their natural need, and may 
be the only hold which goodness has upon them. Lit- 
erature is filled with examples to show that the impulse 
may become overmastering, — such as the cases in " The 
Scarlet Letter," or in Dostoievski 's " Crime and Pun- 
ishment. ' ' 68 But it does not need examples so melo- 
dramatic to bring this truth home to us. What 



44 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

mother has not had the startling yet sacred experience 
of hearing a sensitive child make sudden and volun- 
tary confession? Some evil act — which may be 
wholly unsuspected — or some evil thought which has 
been too long suppressed — serves to set up an unbear- 
able tension and uneasiness. Is not this what De 
Quincey meant when he wrote, "If in this world 
there is one misery having no relief, it is the pressure 
on the heart from the Incommunicable. And . . . 
what burden is that which only is insupportable by 
human fortitude % I should answer ... it is the bur- 
den of the Incommunicable. ,,69 True, indeed, it is 
that * ' For him who confesses, shams are over and reali- 
ties are begun. ' ' 70 The soul 's endeavor to purge itself 
is an impulse so definite and so universal at certain 
stages in its development, that to determine these 
stages forms a valuable point of departure for a 
psychological analysis. 

The question asked at the outset of this chapter 
will not have been forgotten by the reader. When 
we turn to science and enquire why the act of confes- 
sion should bring a relief so intense to the mind and 
spirit, the mental physiologist has an answer ready. 
If it seem an answer more or less theoretical, one 
must not forget that the whole subject, after all, is 
still in the realm of hypothesis and theory, and that 
a categorical reply cannot in the nature of things be 
given until there is a further advance in the study 
of the mental phenomena. Yet much has been de- 
termined. By recent experiment it has been shown 
that the connection between our speech and our ideas 
is closer than we used to think ; that the latter, indeed, 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 45 

is practically dependent upon the former; and that 
upon the faculty of language our whole intellectual 
fabric really rests. 71 

Many philosophers have suggested this dependence 
in the past. From Abelard to Humboldt, it has been 
the favorite paradox of the bolder mind. But it 
can never have been more than a paradox, a sug- 
gestion, until the modern experiments in the study 
of the deaf-mute revealed its possibilities as a truth. 
These studies have demonstrated at least one fact; 
i.e., that the person deprived of the faculty of speech 
(and this includes, of course, any possibility of hear- 
ing and understanding speech) is deprived as well of 
those mental images which are associated with lan- 
guage. Lacking the means of expression, the subject 
will be found also lacking in the ideas to express. 
The teachers of Helen Keller 72 describe her original 
condition as one almost of idiocy. This woman, who 
now wields a prose of extraordinary clarity and beauty 
in the service of the most poetic and complex ideas, 
as a young child felt none but brute emotions, such 
as hunger or anger; and was incapable of anything 
even approaching an abstract conception. By the 
restoration of the normal channels to thought, very 
gradually, but very surely, the ideas themselves, first 
simple, then more elaborate, were evolved and re- 
stored to their domination in the human scheme. The 
power of forming a conception is by this example 
seen to be dependent on the means of expressing it; 
while language takes its place as the normal and indis- 
pensable prerequisite to thought. 73 

Once possessed of language, man raised himself very 



46 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

rapidly above the brute-level, for his every new word 
became the nucleus for a group of new concepts. Com- 
municativeness, as such, is therefore his natural tend- 
ency; his mental capital must be kept constantly in 
circulation if it is to increase ; and the busy garrulity 
of the world is a guaranty of its vitality. Further, 
it is normal, if not inevitable, for speech to utter 
whatever thought the mind conceives. That restless 
spirit which we call human cannot lie hid; it must 
forth or die. After having once attained to a certain 
degree of vitality, no concept can be suppressed with- 
out strain. An idea, once formulated in your mind, 
is a power which must act, and if you fail to give it 
an outlet by your utterance, it is apt to create a dis- 
agreeable tension. That these suppressions are ab- 
normal, that if persisted in they cause a marked un- 
easiness, that one's natural impulse is to share one's 
thought or idea with another, we do not need to read 
in books ; they are matter of daily experience. 

Such popular phrases as "having something on 
one's mind," express clearly our perception of this 
condition. In children, to whom fresh ideas are a 
continual source of excitement, the strain may become 
exaggerated. Wholly apart from conduct, many a 
child cannot eat or sleep normally if it be prevented 
from "telling mother" of some new idea which has 
taken a hold upon its mind. A child known to the 
writer will lie awake for hours under the tension of 
such a suppression, and be asleep in five minutes after 
the perplexity has been communicated, even when all 
explanation has been postponed till morning. Adults 
have naturally more self-control ; yet literature is filled 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 47 

with the struggles involved by such suppression, when 
the suppressed idea is one of importance. Bizarre 
avowals, confessions, and explanations crowd the pages 
of history; yet we continue to wonder at the candid 
revelations of Pepys, or Cellini, Ivan the Terrible, or 
Catherine of Russia, without realizing the power of 
the law by which they are driven to make them. 74 

It has been assumed that the idea must attain to a 
certain degree of importance in the mind conceiving it. 
No ideas are more important to most of us than 
those affecting our own conduct or opinions. A per- 
son having these under consideration has created a 
group of ideas concerning self. If he adds thereto dis- 
satisfaction with himself due to newly aroused reli- 
gious feeling, immediately this nucleus is charged with 
emotion, penitence, grief, and humility. Thus height- 
ened, it becomes an unbearable centre of mental ac- 
tivity, possessing temporarily all his energies, and in 
its struggle for expression, distracting the whole poor 
creature. Hawthorne vividly describes this condition 
in "The Marble Faun." 75 "I could not bear it," 
Hilda cries. * ' It seemed as if I made the awful guilt 
my own by keeping it hidden in my heart. I grew 
a fearful thing to myself. I was growing mad ! ' ' The 
relief when she makes her confession is described as 
unspeakable, — the satisfaction of a great need of the 
heart, and the passing away of a torture. 76 

For a longer or shorter period of time, according to 
the subject's strength of character and the various 
crises through which he may pass, this suppression 
continues, bringing with it an intense misery. The 
religious crisis forwards the moment of confession by 



48 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

softening the man's heart and loosening his will. 
And when, by his first words of avowal, this tension 
is relaxed, the relief has been compared to the drain- 
ing of an abscess. Physicians understand this fact 
so well, in their treatment of many nervous cases, that 
confessions are not discouraged, and are treated as 
under the seal. The writer heard not long since how a 
famous neurologist had treated a woman patient un- 
successfully for many months ; but after she had con- 
fessed to a hidden sin, she recovered rapidly. 

In examples where this impulse is heightened by 
literary gifts and natural expansiveness, the relief 
is touched with joy. Not only has a channel been 
provided through which the pent-up feelings may 
readily flow, but it is a channel also open to the crea- 
tive f acuities — a new outlet for newly acquired powers. 
Thus Augustin is filled with exultant delight, prais- 
ing God; thus, too, is Teresa, casting aside her diffi- 
dence. The sense of serene power, so strong in 
Cardan's "Life," and in the opening books of Rous- 
seau's "Confessions," is due to such a combination. 
Many critics have set this emotion down to piety 
only, but if we regard it nearly, we will see that it 
partakes the characteristics of a joy more constant and 
less subject to fluctuation than the pious joy — no less 
than the happiness of intellectual creation. 

Were it possible to obtain the data, it would be 
interesting to determine the usual length of the period 
of suppression and its cause. These must vary 
widely. Criminal annals have shown us cases where 
such a suppression has lasted for many years; and 
there may, of course, be natures who die unconf essed. 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 49 

But when we realize that the recipient of the confession 
need only be one other, and that the relief of such 
confession may be just as great if no action of any 
kind follow it, we see that it is very doubtful if many 
men go to their graves carrying with them secrets 
which no other human being has shared. And if 
any religious emotion or disturbance enter into one's 
life at all, its first effect would be unquestionably to 
rouse and to excite this impulse to confess. 

The characteristics of the earlier confessions are 
readily comprehended. Their motive-forces have not 
changed to-day, although familiarity with the literary 
form has brought into play the confusing elements 
of imitation, and the ages have weakened the primal 
emotions. Still are they being written under the 
influence of that autobiographical intention, which 
has been discussed elsewhere, 77 and which has been 
defined "as writing as though no one in the world 
were to read it, yet with the purpose of being read. " 78 
In the privacy of unveiling the soul to God and so 
making a fuller revelation to man, the first religious 
confession was written, and the last will be writ- 
ten. " Columbus/ ' says Emerson, "discovered no isle 
or key so lonely as himself," 79 and this is the first 
discovery of all serious self -study. Charged with a 
feeling the more intense because of its previous sup- 
pression, a confessant sits down to "tell all about it" 
as far as his gifts and powers of expression will permit. 
We have seen how these differ, and we shall return 
to this difference, which is important. All confess- 
ants are not Augustin, nor yet Bunyan, nor yet James 
Linsley, nor yet John Gratton. But they must and do 



50 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

share certain characteristics and tendencies, however 
wide the variations in individual force. 

Surely the very act of writing a confession presup- 
poses that the emotions confessed have dropped from 
their first height, and reached a secondary stage. 
This subsidence must not be forgotten, though it gen- 
erally is ; it is equally true of every feeling described, 
of love or hate, of pious or criminal passion. The 
mere fact of writing about it shows that the high- water 
mark of the emotion itself has been passed. Failure 
to comprehend this is one of the most potent sources 
of prevalent misinterpretation of the document. 
When the confessant writes, "I feel thus and so," a 
distrust is immediately bred in the mind of the reader, 
who, finding it impossible to believe that a fellow- 
creature can so catch his own moods and feelings ' ' on 
the wing," as it were, communicates this distrust to 
the matter of the record. Less difficulty is experienced 
where the writer substitutes the past tense ; remember- 
ing that all confessions must needs be confessions of 
something which the mind is able to analyze and sur- 
vey, i.e., of something past. That in a sensitive nature 
the mental eye may exaggerate the past experience, 
is of course true; but it is less common than many 
have imagined. The reasons why Augustin is accused 
of it have already been mentioned. Many of us, how- 
ever, share Macaulay's feeling, that the religious man 
over-accents his wickedness. " There cannot be a 
greater mistake," declares Macaulay with his usual 
emphasis, "than to infer from the strong expressions 
in which a devout man bemoans his exceeding sinful- 
ness, that he has led a worse life than his neighbors. 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 51 

Many excellent persons . . . have in their autobiogra- 
phies and diaries applied to themselves, and doubtless 
with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied 
to Titus Oates or Mrs. Brownrigg. ' ' 80 

Macaulay, with many others, fails to observe that 
the difference here is not that the converted man has 
led a worse life than his neighbors, but only that he 
is now able to recognize it as evil. Bunyan's youth 
resembles that of many men, yet the moralist does not 
find it admirable any more than Bunyan did. 81 The 
early years of Tolstoi differ very little from those 
spent by other young Russians of his day and so- 
ciety; but are we required to think, for that reason, 
that they were well spent? Do we really feel as we 
read his avowals, or those of Alfieri, for instance, that 
he exaggerates when he calls that preconverted time 
immoral ? 82 When John B. Gough describes his 
drunkard degradation, and George Muller the vices 
for which he was arrested, 83 are they exaggerating be- 
cause they have come to see themselves as others see 
them? The facts of the case are against Macaulay. 
And if we shift our standards a little, believing that 
the eyes which see the hideousness of sin are now open, 
when before they were closed, then we feel no distrust 
of the self -depreciation of our great confessants. 

In one of Shelley's letters, he remarks that "Rous- 
seau's ' Confessions ' are either a disgrace to the con- 
fessor or a string of falsehoods, and probably the lat- 
ter. ' ' 84 The ' ' either-or, ' ' in this sentence is very 
characteristic of Shelley's hasty and tumultuous mind ; 
and his criticism well exhibits his inability to see 
things as they really were. With all his high ideals 



52 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of virtue, his acts yet produced the miserable re- 
sults of vice; with all his delicate sensitiveness to 
beauty, his private relations yet show an ugly as- 
pect ; while the lack of courageous self-knowledge ham- 
pered him throughout his life. A man like this finds 
an indelicacy in all real candour, and by temperament 
would rather never look facts about himself in the 
face. His attitude toward Rousseau is shared by 
many, — even Lord Morley thinks that the opening 
sentences of the " Confessions " are blasphemous. 85 
Yet it is to such an one, if he be at all open-minded, 
that the sincere confession is especially addressed, 
and for whom it has a particular value. It may form, 
perhaps, his only influence on the subjective side, caus- 
ing him for once to examine his real state ; ' ' to strip 
himself bare as Christ stripped himself before cruci- 
fixion ... to look at the face of his soul in the mir- 
ror of the virtues of Christ. ' ' 86 Such examination 
is in itself a religious act, and shows its effect by the 
impression which these records have produced in 
times past over minds by no means naturally intro- 
spective. 

For the introspective person has his uses, though he 
will never form one of the majority. He is a develop- 
ment of the Christian influence, which has for cen- 
turies worked to produce this special and highly evo- 
lutionized type of the inward-looking mind. What 
religion encouraged, on the one hand, science also, with 
her perpetual questioning and analyzing, encouraged 
on the other, so that the very word philosophy has to- 
day become almost a synonym for subjective discus- 
sion. What result these influences have had upon the 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 53 

evolution of modern man, and modern thought ; upon 
the recorded inner life of the first, and the special 
trend of the second, must needs form the subject of a 
separate chapter. 

It has been noted that there are other sources for 
the early religious self -study, and other influences af- 
fecting its character, upon which we have not yet 
touched. Before entering on the study of the basic 
underlying problems of subjectivity and introspection, 
it were well to consider such of these sources as may 
be revealed by history. The connotation in our minds 
of the words " apologia' ' and "confession" is founded 
on a very modern rapprochement of the two ideas. 
When Newman wrote an "Apologia pro Vita sua," he 
used a title which already carried for his reader an 
idea beyond mere exposition, and involving excuse. 
Now, this meaning of excuse is modern and secon- 
dary, although in a sense it usurps the functions of the 
primary meaning of exposition. When one examines 
that group of writings technically known as the ' l Cor- 
pus Apologetarum Christianorum, ' ' or the "Body of 
Christian Apologetics," he is struck with their im- 
personal character. A defence of the faith by means 
of an adequate exposition of its doctrines, — this was 
the original aim of the apologist. To him, there would 
have been dishonor in the faintest suggestion of ex- 
cuse. 

This same intention is maintained here and there 
in literature, during the Middle Ages, and there are 
returns to it, occasionally, even to-day. But these 
returns only serve to mark more strikingly that a 
new, personal meaning is now attached to the word 



54 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

" apology." When Pietro Pomponazzi 87 wrote an 
"Apologia" for his materialistic tract whose doctrine 
disagreed with the doctrine of the soul's immortality, 
one somehow expects to find it contain his personal 
excuses for his lack of faith. When Sir Leslie Ste- 
phen 88 calls his volume of essays "An Agnostic 's Apol- 
ogy/' on e is somehow surprised to find the term used 
in its elder sense of doctrinal defence and exposition. 

How, then, did this idea of defence by exposition 
come to include that of personal statement and per- 
sonal confession? The Greek word means simply the 
speech of a defendant in reply to that of a prose- 
cutor. 89 Hence the "Apology" of Socrates, whose de- 
fiant attitude seems in our minds a very contradic- 
tion of his titular address. 90 "I am conscious of no 
guilt, ' ' he declared ; and then entered on certain argu- 
ments in support of his opinions which permitted him 
to display his powers in their most characteristic 
form. 91 There is certainly here no intention of ex- 
cuse. 

It has been similarly suggested that Christianity, 
being a prophetic religion, should not have descended 
to argument, but should have continued merely to de- 
clare God's will. The Fathers, however, did not find 
that a mere declaration sufficed them. During that 
great second century, when apologetics 92 became prac- 
tically a science, all literature of this kind begins to 
change in tone. It displays, in fact, the first effects of 
that spontaneous evolution from the objective to the 
subjective which was characteristic of other lines of 
thought as well. The Fathers may not have known, 
as we know, that every creed must pass through its 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 55 

apologetic stage, when the energy of its adherents 
must needs be devoted to doctrinal exposition, defini- 
tion, and defence. The building of a Church from, a 
creed, of an organization from a set of opinions, is 
largely dependent upon the manner in which this 
primary exposition is accomplished. The definition 
and development of men 's ideas as to the value of such 
and such a belief, is naturally of the greatest impor- 
tance in causing that belief to prevail. 

Christianity possessed an immense advantage in the 
vitality, the acumen, and the energy of its primary 
apologists and expositors. It is true that the modern 
reader will have difficulty in finding a single docu- 
ment of this large group 93 which bears what he to-day 
would term an apologetic significance. Their attitude 
is as sure and unswerving as that of Socrates him- 
self ; nor must it be forgotten that the whole world 
stood, at this time, for the prosecutor of Christianity, 
whose place at the bar was not unlike that of the 
Greek philosopher, while facing some of the same 
charges. 

These disquisitions are almost wholly doctrinal in 
character, many of them occupied only in the analy- 
sis of certain moot-points of dogma. The only sugges- 
tion of personality about them lies in their acrimony ; 
for the vexation of the writer is an indication that 
his feelings and his temperament in general are in- 
volved in the discussion. 

By the time of the Renaissance, the classic, i.e., the 
impersonal, intellectual apology, had grown to be dif- 
ferentiated from the personal apology. This last was 
the child of Christian controversy, born of the furious 



$6 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

zeal of the saints, to whom a difference of opinion on 
doctrinal points meant life or death. To our greater 
tolerance there is something strange and unnecessary 
in this ready anger of the Fathers, which charged their 
writings with animus, while at the same time it re- 
moved them even further, if possible, from our pres- 
ent conception of the sphere of apology. Let us take 
the famous controversy between Rufinus and Jerome. 94 
The former states his attitude toward Manichgeanism, 
with his reasons for making certain interpretations 
from the works of Origen; the latter directly attacks 
these views, and gives his reasons therefor. Both 
adopt an assertive manner quite contrary to what we 
should now term "apologetic" in any current sense 
of that word. Rufinus talks of Jerome 's * ' invectives' ' 
and of his "subterfuges of hypocrisy." Jerome re- 
torts upon "the unprecedented shamelessness" of 
Rufinus, whom he scruples not to call "a scorpion." 
Each accuses the other of heresy and of double-deal- 
ing; each defends himself by accusing the other. 95 
When Rufinus asserts that Jerome is still a Cicero- 
nian, notwithstanding his dream that God accused 
him of following Cicero more ardently than Christ, 
Jerome opens the full vials of his irony upon his less 
cultured opponent. He congratulates Rufinus upon a 
literary style, so unclassical, so rough and thorny, 
which shows that he has not been hampered by any love 
of the classics ! Although Jerome himself has written 
of his famous dream as a complete conversion to 
things heavenly; yet he cannot bear that Rufinus 
should say a word against "My Tully"; and immedi- 
ately rushes to declare, with all heat and defiance, that 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 57 

no sensible person would hold himself to be bound by a 
promise given in a dream ! 

Neither of these two men offers any explana- 
tion of his own views which would convince a modern, 
unpartisan outsider that he had the right to such a 
hostile attitude toward the views of the other. Apolo- 
getic is the least accurate possible word to describe 
the assaults of Jerome's wit, his irony, vituperation, 
and impatient energy of refutation. Yet both in his 
matter and manner, in his imagery and his attack, 
there is seen the development of a personal note ; and 
this personal tone is augmented by the introduction of 
autobiographical details, though these are scattered 
and slight. 96 

Here, then, is the beginning of the personal note in 
apology ; and of course it is more marked in a nature 
like that of Jerome than it would be in a cooler head 
and heart. John Chrysostom 97 makes use of the per- 
sonal manner, but he is not, like Jerome, introspec- 
tive. In Justin Martyr, the personal tone has grown 
into a full personal explanation. 

The study of early Christian apologetics will not 
further our purpose in these pages beyond this point. 
It will be understood that the drill in exegesis which 
work of this type lent to the powerful intelli- 
gences of the Fathers tended to expand and heighten 
the qualities which make for self -study and self -un- 
derstanding. Jerome and Rufinus may confine their 
personal exposition to an interchange of vituperation ; 
Tertullian's voice may thunder down the ages bear- 
ing his expression of opinion; but the tendency to 
make personal all religious appeal becomes more 



58 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

marked. No man can explain to another a truth very 
near his own heart without studying his own nature; 
nor can any one vividly expound his religious views 
without drawing some picture of their effect upon him- 
self. An appreciation of this verity is borne in upon 
us on reading such documents as Justin Martyr's 
' * Dialogue with Trypho, ' ' and the apocalyptic l ' Shep- 
herd of Hermas. ' ' In the former, several paragraphs, 
dealing with Justin's education and religious develop- 
ment, show how keenly he felt the need of a personal 
exposition of these matters. The unknown Hermas, 
author of the " Shepherd," makes one of the earliest 
attempts in literature to give a systematic account of 
a personal revelation through divine visions. 98 Thus, 
the appeal of a man's belief to himself, its influence on 
himself, are, after all, his chief reasons for trying to 
impose it upon another, as well as his best guides as 
to the manner of so doing. Faith is an emotional 
factor; and no one can hope to make converts by a 
mere abstract discussion of its validity or its reason- 
ableness. "La raison," observes Eenan, "aura tou- 
jours peu de martyrs." The doctrines of Manichaeus 
seemed to Augustin to have been based on a truly 
scientific method," but that fact could not hold him, 
once their personal appeal had waned. The instant 
they ceased to affect him for good, to aid his steps, 
that instant they appeared to his mind to be pernicious 
and heretical. The influence which sways another to 
our view is, first of all, the effect our opinion has had 
upon ourselves. The vitality in all defence, in all 
apology, lies here. 

Once introduced into the religious literature of the 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 59 

early Middle Ages, this personal note becomes clearly 
traceable through the scattered monkish and ecclesias- 
tical and even the secular confessiones, testamenta, 
and apologiae of the first twelve centuries. In many 
cases, such as that of the anti-Christian Epistle of the 
Neo-Platonist Porphyry to the prophet Anebo, 100 the 
personal manner is merely rhetorical, and is not in- 
tended to be taken literally. In this Epistle, the 
author states his religious doubts and asks for their 
elucidation, with an assumption of ignorance which we 
know cannot have been real; though it is interesting 
to find him using a personal method. The oft-cited 
passages in the work of Philo-Judaeus 101 contain not 
only real and important self -study, but also some of 
the earliest data obtainable 102 on the influence of that 
Daemon, "who is accustomed," writes Philo, "to con- 
verse with me in an unseen manner, prompting me 
with suggestions. ' ' The material, however, is em- 
bodied in this paragraph without further evolution; 
it has evidently little self-consciousness in its testi- 
mony. 

A number of autobiographical, apologetic confes- 
sions are to be found during the centuries before these 
documents took the conventional shape to which we 
are now accustomed. Some among them suggest the 
religious confession of the future; although it must 
be remembered that, before the unrest preceding the 
Keformation, they lacked the powerful motive for 
completeness which is furnished by change of sect. 
Among the more noteworthy should be mentioned the 
testament and confession in Syriac, of Ephraim of 
Edessa, 103 who, in the fourth century, accuses himself 



60 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of being envious, quarrelsome and cruel, until his heart 
was touched by a spirit. Some doubt attaches to the 
authenticity of this document in its present form, but 
it holds a curious interest for us. The better-known 
"Confessio Patricii" 104 is entirely personal, touching, 
and complete. There will be occasion later in these 
pages to refer to the narrative of Patrick's conversion 
and following career which it contains ; at the moment, 
attention should be called only to the accent of humil- 
ity in which the writer describes himself: ". . . I, a 
rustic, a fugitive, unlearned, indeed . . ." or again: 
"I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and least of all the 
faithful, and most contemptible to very many. ' ' 

Similar records, if of less value, are enshrined in 
Latin collections. Prosper of Aquitaine 105 is said to 
have left a confession markedly personal in tone. 
Perpetuus, 106 Bishop of Tours, confided the statement 
of his beliefs to a " Testamentum, " about the same 
date. Alcuin's 107 "Confessio Fidei" is said to be the 
work of his disciples, although it makes use of the first 
person. A confession in metrical Latin prose, by Paul 
of Cordova, 108 is filled with prayer and invocation. A 
monk, Gotteschalchus, 109 who was tried for heresy in 
the same century, expresses himself both in a " Con- 
fessio,' ' and a " Confessio prolixior" (post hceresim 
damnatam), supporting his apology with texts from 
Scripture. 

By the eleventh century, one may easily find full- 
formed and highly developed confessions, whose origi- 
nal religious purpose has already begun to be modified 
from other causes. The famous letter of Peter Dam- 
iani 110 in which he terms himself "Petrus peccator," 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 61 

shows self -study as well as self -accusation. The tone 
of this letter is deeply penitent, and the writer charges 
himself with many sins, especially those of scurrility 
and laughter. Anselm of Canterbury, 111 according 
to his friend and biographer, Eadmer, portrays his 
own remorse in his "Oratio meditativo, ' ' whose out- 
burst of anguish is, indeed, piercing. Wholly differ- 
ent is its accent from that of a naif chronicler like the 
monk Raoul Glaber, 112 whose narrative contains his 
own reformation through the visit of a hideous fiend. 
When this visitant perched, with mops and mows, 
upon the foot of Glaber 's bed, terror drove him to pray 
in the chapel for the rest of the night. 

Such examples serve, at least, to show the trend of 
the document, its descriptive idea, its personal note, 
its apologetic tendency. Heterogeneous forms begin 
already to appear; and the twelfth century gives us, 
beside the Augustinian confession, the personal 
apology, the confession of revelation, the narrative of 
visions, or of travels to the unseen world, whether of 
heaven or hell. 113 Monkish historical chronicles there 
are, not at all religious and but indirectly autobio- 
graphical, while the germ of the scientific self -study be- 
gins to show itself in descriptions of one's own 
education, records of mental development, and the 
like. 

Abelard's "Letter II," 111 Guibert de Nogent's 
"Life," prefixed to his "History of the Crusades," 115 
are documents beginning to mark this differentiation 
in tone. The " Metalogicus " of John of Salis- 
bury 116 gives a plain account of the course of studies 
pursued by that famous scholar. Full of greater de- 



62 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

tail is a similar record, the ' ' Euriditionis Didasca- 
licse ' ' 117 of the mystic, Hugo of St. Victor, who is also 
reported to have left a "Confessio Fidei." Roger 
Bacon makes his apology to the Pope, in a letter de- 
scribing his labors and struggles. 118 Often religion 
enters into such documents as these only when they 
come under the fear of the Inquisition ; their nature is, 
of course, affected by such fear, and their appeal is 
made directly to the authorities of the Holy Office. 

The entrance into this field of the mystics and their 
records, or revelations, brings us to a final division of 
the subject. It was in these centuries that the Via 
Mystica opened to the imagination of the Middle Ages. 
Along that Way are to pass a great company — "Itin- 
erarium mentis in Deum," as John of Fidanza 119 
named his own progress thereon. The gates of this 
Way had been indicated by Augustin, by Plotinus, as 
some have thought, and by Iamblichus, since undoubt- 
edly Neo-Platonism is the source of all later mys- 
ticism. 120 The visions and revelations to saints and 
contemplatives, such as Hildegarde of Bingen, Eliza- 
beth of Schonau, and their like, threw the gates wide. 
Some of the more important of these pilgrims will be 
considered later in this book. 

With the introduction into the apology, of personal 
confession, the use of this form as a plain exposition of 
doctrine slowly declined. It was no longer needed 
in the same way ; the Church was the indisputed mis- 
tress of the mediaeval world. Her votaries were no 
longer obliged to explain their views to the crowd, 
since the crowd believed as they did. It was no longer 
necessary to convince the Stoic, or the dilettante, or 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 63 

the aristocratic Epicurean of the elder Roman order, 
that he must believe and be saved. Much of the 
seriousness of self -study had been born of this earlier 
necessity, when a man was forced to look very nearly 
to his own mind and beliefs, since he wished his family 
and friends to share them. He felt he must show how 
he had changed for the better; he must describe what 
he was before his conversion as well as what he be- 
came after it. Difference of opinion, heresy, in a 
word, was always wickedness, and the man who felt 
his conduct or his opinions to stand in need of defence 
or excuse, kept alive the apologetic attitude, as we 
understand it to-day. 

Later on, it seems only conduct that evokes apology. 
Not Bruno 's 121 heresy, but Lorenzino de ' Medici 's 
crime 122 needs an apologia. Still later the tone 
lightens; in the hand of Colley Cibber, 123 for instance, 
the apology becomes almost gay. But even in our own 
day the examples of this form may be found in all 
their original seriousness with only that change in ac- 
centuating conduct which we have just noticed. New- 
man 124 felt that not his change to Catholicism required 
an apology ; but rather the charge of double-dealing in 
connection with his submission to the Church. This 
he justifies, he excuses, as best he may ; it is not easily 
explained. His attitude is curiously non-apologetic 
on that side where some apology would seem to have 
been demanded by the nature of the acts, confessed. 
But then the apologetic attitude would seem to be al- 
most wholly a question of temperament, not that of 
will. Augustin, Rousseau, Oscar Wilde, possess it; 
and there exist candid confessions where it never 



64 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

seems even to have been felt by the conf essant himself, 
and where he merely states the facts without comment. 
Cardan is an example of this ; so is his contemporary, 
Cellini; 125 De Quincey is another notable instance; 
and there is a curious example of a non-apologetic 
state of mind contained in that confession by Alex- 
ander Hamilton which was known as ' ' The Reynolds 
Pamphlet. ' ' 126 Hamilton had been accused of spec- 
ulating with the public funds, such being the general 
explanation of his relations with Reynolds. The real 
explanation was an intrigue with Mrs. Reynolds, util- 
ized by the husband for purposes of blackmail. 
Hamilton is forced to make a full statement of the 
truth. He writes in this tone: "I proceed ... to 
offer a frank and plain solution of the enigma, by giv- 
ing a history of the origin and progress of my con- 
nection with Mrs. R . . ." And later, "I had noth- 
ing to lose as to my reputation for chastity ; concern- 
ing which the world had fixed a previous opinion. ' ' 

After remarking that this opinion was the correct 
one, and that "I dreaded extremely a disclosure and 
was willing to make large sacrifices to avoid one, ' ' he 
proceeds energetically to refute the embezzlement 
charges, pointing to the truth as to a justification. 
The relative importance in his mind of the two sins 
is at once characteristic and suggestive. What would 
to many minds have appeared to require a sincere 
apology (if only to Mrs. Hamilton), is treated as the 
insignificant explanation of an unjust accusation. 

The literary influence of the body of Christian 
apologetics has thus been exerted in unexpected direc- 
tions; and has, partially at least, endured until the 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 65 

present time. From Jerome and Pamphilus to New- 
ton and Whiston the difference in their theological 
manner is comparatively slight. It is true that one 
must not exaggerate their influence, since it was their 
ardent faith that counted rather than their intellec- 
tual force. 127 Until the nineteenth century, when- 
ever the apologist made his appearance, it was to 
build his explanation upon the old foundations, and 
to raise his defence upon the classic plan. 128 Still, for 
him did theology, philosophy, and metaphysics form 
the three strands of one cord. But with the latter-day 
growth of scientific methods, these strands have been 
permanently loosened. The new psychology, the an- 
thropology of Tylor, Spencer, and Frazer, the evolu- 
tion theories as affecting biology, all these have tended 
to separate and divide those various elements which 
together form a man's philosophy and religion. Thus 
the self-student can no longer approach his apologia 
in the same spirit. His candour may produce similar 
results, but it has a different motive power. He real- 
izes, as Augustin, by reason of his genius, realized, 
that the accurate effect of the religious experience 
upon himself is better worth analyzing than all the 
metaphysics of the Schoolmen. Augustin felt this 
when he devoted ten books of the "Confessions" to the 
psychological treatment of his subject, and only three 
to the theological. Our modern confessant has done 
well to observe the same general proportion. 

The "Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum , ' has 
maintained its effective position in religious literature 
by reason of the vigorous intellectual force originally 
responsible for all exposition and defence of doctrine. 



66 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

The personal record owes it much beside name and 
flexibility of treatment. In modern times, its classic 
animosity of tone has been transferred to the contro- 
versies of science; while the milder apology, so-called, 
has tended to become the property of that mind which 
is anxious to convince itself of its own strength or 
weakness. Hence to-day we readily connect the idea 
of apology with that of excuse. 129 

In the study of any subject by a valid method, classi- 
fication and analysis must precede induction. If these 
are full and sufficient, then the reader is often able to 
foresee the conclusions of his author. When it be un- 
derstood how the written confession arose at the in- 
spiration of Augustin, just as the practice of public 
confession was tending to decline (in the second and 
third centuries), then it will be readily comprehended 
that its literary style must have been formed by the 
explanatory drill in the works of the Christian Apolo- 
gist. That its vitality came from yet another source — 
that subjective trend developing in the world of 
thought — must not be forgotten, although the discus- 
sion of this source is necessarily postponed until the 
following chapter. But even without any tendency 
to subjectivism being taken into account, history 
makes plain certain personal attitudes, which, even 
in the time of Rousseau, remained obscure. If the 
forces governing thought and controlling literary 
movements are noted in their beginnings, their later 
progress presents few difficulties to our comprehen- 
sion. Science to-day, as never before, aids the task. 
Psychology, teaching the relation between idea and 
language, together with the power of group-imitation ; 



CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 67 

anthropology and sociology, unfolding the growth 
of peoples and of societies, now throw a clearer light 
upon the individual records with which we are about 
to deal. The time spent in analysis, therefore, has 
not been wasted, since it permits us to approach the 
more complex parts of our subject, with confidence 
that its historical and literary elements have been dis- 
entangled, and are understood. 



Ill 

INTROSPECTION: THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 



I. 1. Definition, and attitudes toward introspection. 

2. Plato, Christianity, the Sophists, Protagoras, Dem- 

ocritus. 

3. Animism, metaphysics, the Church. 

4. Tendency toward subjectivity; Seneca, Marcus 

Aurelius, Epictetus. 

5. Self -study and mysticism; Neo-Platonists, Plotinus, 

Augustin. 
II. 1. Self-consciousness. 

2. Mental processes. 

3. Psychology. 

4. Value of introspection in the past. 

5. The Ego. 

III. 1. The types in literature and philosophy; Augustin. 

2. England and Germany; Al-Ghazzali and Descartes. 

3. Kant, Comte, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, 

Nietzsche. 

4. Dante, Petrarch, Eneas Sylvius, Montaigne. 

5. Browne, Rousseau, Cardan, Byron, and Shelley. 

6. Minor examples. 

7. Emerson, Amiel, the Gurneys, and Oscar Wilde. 



Ill 

introspection: the introspective type 

It is now determined of what main elements the 
first religious confessions were composed, how partly 
the general drift of thought, and partly the direct im- 
pulse given by individual genius, was responsible for 
their form and for their content. Nor will it be 
found difficult to believe that the training in exegesis 
and in dialectic of those earlier apologists, would later, 
have a perceptible influence. Thus, gradually, the 
records of personal religious experience came to have a 
definite character of their own, one, moreover, which 
tended to become more and more subjective. But 
such influences in themselves do not wholly account for 
the increasing development in religion of the mental 
habit which we term introspection; they might give 
definiteness and direction to the introspective tend- 
ency, but they could not of themselves create it. A 
new element introduced into thought will of neces- 
sity create new literary forms and fresh points of 
view. It remains for us to ascertain what were the ele- 
ments introduced by introspection into the religious 
life, and what new literary forms it has served to pro- 
duce. 

The word means no more, of course, than "looking 
within"; although it is used to describe a familiar 
mental state, and one which we are apt to think of 

71 



72 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

as wholly modern. All that is implied in this moder- 
nity is best defined in the words of Mill, when he re- 
marked that "the feelings of the modern mind are 
more various, more complex and manifold than those 
of the ancients ever were. The modern mind is what 
the ancient was not, brooding and self-conscious ; and 
its meditative self -consciousness has discovered depths 
in the human soul which the Greeks and Komans did 
not dream of, and would not have understood. ' ' * 

That the world has owed much to this power of 
"meditative self -consciousness," Mill hardly needs to 
remind us ; yet no one will deny that it is in general 
regarded with distrust. There has come to be attached 
to our conception of the introspective state of mind 
the idea that it is unwholesome and abnormal; and 
this connotation suggests that the world clings to cer- 
tain standards of what is normal, long after they have 
ceased to be in any sense accurate. The introspec- 
tive type of mind has ceased to be a rarity ; and one 
may well question if it be advisable to thrust it aside 
as abnormal without a more valid reason than is fur- 
nished by instincts half-vestigiary. No doubt the 
presence of a self -analytical tendency in some neurotic 
conditions, and the "culte du moi" in certain so- 
called decadent literary schools, have had their share 
in maintaining this antagonism. Yet it will be 
noticed that even when there is no neurosis and no 
decadence — when the introspective tendency is coin- 
cident with a healthy energy and a robust scientific 
habit — yet the world's antagonism is never lessened. 
In fact, it is a sentiment only to be accurately de- 
fined by the use of such terms as "instinctive uneasi- 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 73 

ness," " instinctive distrust," suggesting that it is in 
itself a part of our inheritance from the past. Possi- 
bly it is to this same instinctive distrust that we owe 
the curious silence of some of our greatest critics on 
the subject — a silence which seems at times, to be 
almost deliberate. Arnold, for instance, though he 
loved to write of such profoundly introspective na- 
tures as Amiel, or the de Guerins, and of such topics 
as " Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment" — yet 
somehow contrives to avoid any discussion of the 
degree and the value of a "looking within." He ac- 
cepts the introspection contained in these thoughts 
and journals, but it does not appear to hold any sig- 
nificance for him. Nor is this true of Arnold only; 
it is true of other critics, both English and foreign; 
it makes the pathway which we have to tread singu- 
larly barren of comment. No authoritative voice 
speaks to us concerning this trend of the human mind. 
We are unguided when, in our endeavor to look into 
the past, we seek for the earliest indications of that 
tendency which was to mark the world's maturity. 
For to the Greek, to the pagan mind, introspection as 
we know it, was practically non-existent; and there 
came a time when a joyously objective world beheld 
with anxiety the clouding of its sky by the develop- 
ment of self-consciousness. It is true that the con- 
templative religions of the East had long held another 
ideal. 

When Manu describes the creation of the universe, 
he tells that "From himself [Buddha] drew forth the 
mind, which is both real and unreal ; likewise from the 
mind egoism which possesses the function of self-con- 



74 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

sciousness, and is lordly/ ' 2 This sentence has a mod- 
ern ring ; it bears, indeed, almost a Nietzschean quality. 
It would seem to mark the contrast between Eastern 
and Western philosophy. Yet even among the Greeks 
there are to be found, if one searches, the germs of what 
appears to be in the nature of a curiosity about self, 
which, later, was to evolve new types of thinkers and of 
thoughts. But of what nature is this curiosity ? Is it 
properly to be called subjective at all? It is true that 
Socrates quoted that ancient Delphian inscription 
"Know thyself," 3 and in a manner suggestive of 
modern conceptions: "I must first 'know myself,' as 
the Delphian inscription says ; to be curious about that 
which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance 
of my own self, would be ridiculous. . . . Am I a 
monster more complicated and swollen with passion 
than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and 
simpler sort?" 4 Although Socrates asked such ques- 
tions, he did not attempt to answer them by any 
method which to-day would be called introspective. 
In his mind these queries rather served a disciplinary 
purpose; much, indeed, as the modern philosopher 
loves to propound anew the ultimate enigmas in order 
both to humble his reader and to justify his specula- 
tion. Plato's introduction to the " Alcibiades" 5 (the 
authenticity of which remains in doubt) contains a 
paragraph wherein Socrates recommends his "sweet 
friend" to attain self-knowledge through observation 
and an open mind. 6 

There is small suggestion of any real "looking 
within" about this. Yet there are historians who still 
insist in placing upon Plato the entire responsibility 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 75 

for the modern interest in self. Notwithstanding the 
fact that Plato specifically condemns it as a weakness, 
— and this for reasons to be noted later, — this fact of 
his depreciation of the Ego has been held by these crit- 
ics to constitute the source of the later Christian doc- 
trine of self -mortification ! 7 

No doubt the conception of a multiple personality, 
of an Ego, which was not one but two, or even more ; 
of one Self ruling, or watching, or struggling with 
another Self, is very, very old. No doubt it is the 
first of our conceptions the formation of which was 
due to a deliberate effort at introspection, however 
rudimentary. There are traditions, for example, that 
Pythagoras recommended self-examination to his dis- 
ciples, but they remain traditions. 8 Such a conception, 
at such a time, must have been a veritable tour-de- 
force; and would necessarily have been followed by a 
reaction. 

Comments are freely made by critics and historians 
on the incapacity or the unwillingness of the Greeks 
to let us see anything whatever of their thinking and 
feeling selves. It was a practice so foreign to their 
habit of mind, that when Pater causes Marius "to keep 
a register of the movements of his own private 
thoughts or humors/ ' he is obliged to excuse the pro- 
ceeding for his hero, by terming it a "modernism." 
"The ancient writers,' ' Pater continues, "having been 
jealous for the most part of affording us so much as a 
glimpse of that interior self, which, in many cases, 
would have actually doubled the interest of their 
objective informations. ' ' 9 

This incapacity or unwillingness becomes more com- 



76 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

prehensible when we turn from the Greek mind itself, 
to the nature of the beliefs with which it was filled. 
To us, maturity means self-knowledge, and self-knowl- 
edge implies the ability to distinguish the subjective 
from the objective, the actuality from the illusion. 
Our minds have incorporated into such ideas the ex- 
periences of many centuries, and so completely, that to 
detach our ideas from their fundamental bases is diffi- 
cult, if not impossible. Let us try, at least, to conceive 
the Greek imagination as filled wholly with the con- 
ception of forces possessing a real, objective existence. 
The Self, or Spirit, was as real to him, as it is to-day 
to the Australian bushman, and in much the same way. 
It was no less than a little, tangible image of the man, 
winged, elusive, and under the control of powerful in- 
visible forces quite outside the natural visible forces 
which he understood. Its movements, passions, and 
destination were not in the least affected by the will of 
the possessor. Naturally, therefore, he did not like 
to talk about it, nor indeed to think or write about it ; 
since, when he did so, he only felt the more his help- 
lessness in the grasp of Destiny. Moreover, to ex- 
amine too closely into the habits of this co-dweller, 
might be apt to call down upon the inquisitive the 
wrath of his gods, whose power lay in their mystery. 
No wonder the Greek remained jealous of affording 
us any glimpse into that interior self, — real dweller 
on the threshold of life! 

A change, of course, in these semi-savage imagina- 
tions came at last. And for this change, and its bear- 
ing on the development of the introspective tendency, 
one must turn to the histories of philosophy. One 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 77 

and all, these unite in attributing to that strange group 
of men, known as the Greek Sophists, the first attempt 
at a definitely subjective philosophical conception. 10 
Yet, if one bears in mind the fact that to the Greek, 
his eidolon, his image of himself, which comes near to 
what to-day we should call the soul, had a definitely 
objective existence, much of his antagonism to the 
Sophist teaching is made plain. We understand much 
better why he felt it to be destructive. 

Turning to inner experience, the Sophists made 
what is believed to be the first attempt to study man, 
through his mental life. Their doctrine, startling in 
its novelty, held that religion lies within our con- 
sciousness, and does not reside in the performance of 
traditional rites and customs. 11 Protagoras, the first 
to avow himself Sophist, 12 stated the formula, "Man 
is the measure of all things ; " 13 which, if accepted, 
takes for granted a modern attitude, and no small 
amount of subjectivism. Tracing his idea to its source, 
it will be remembered that tradition assigns to Pro- 
tagoras as teacher that Democritus of Abdera, in whose 
doctrine a high place was allotted to a distinct con- 
ception of soul. This soul, we know must have been 
objective; it was the eidolon of the man. Yet, in 
itself, such a conception postulates a rudimentary in- 
trospection; while there remain to us also fragments 
by Democritus of an autobiographical character. 14 

Even the developed subjective doctrines of the 
Sophists seem to-day elementary from the philosophi- 
cal point of view, but their tendency is significant. 
That such tendency should have produced little of defi- 
nite importance is not surprising when we know that 



78 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

most of the facts essential to the formation of a sub- 
jective philosophy were lacking at the time, even to 
those men who held the soul to be distinct from 
the body, and who advocated a study of self. The 
entrance into the field of investigation at this point 
of the ethnologist and anthropologist, with their com- 
parative data, opens a new and fascinating approach 
to the study of mental development, nor is it possible 
to ignore that striking theory wherein Tylor accounts 
by his data upon animism, for the first subjective 
tendencies of thought. 

Tylor 's arguments are exceedingly interesting, and 
we shall have frequent occasion to refer to them in a 
later section of this book. "The savage thinker," he 
writes, "though occupying himself so much with the 
phenomena of life, sleep, disease, and death, seems 
to have taken for granted, as a matter of course, the 
ordinary operations of his own mind. It hardly oc- 
curred to him to think about the machinery of think- 
ing. . . . The metaphysical philosophy of thought 
taught in our modern European lecture-rooms is his- 
torically traced back to the speculative psychology of 
ancient Greece. . . . When Democritus propounded 
the great problem of metaphysics, 'How do we per- 
ceive external things?' ... he put forth, in answer, 
... a theory of thought. He explained the fact of 
perception by declaring that things are always throw- 
ing off images (eidola) of themselves, which images 
. . . enter a recipient soul and are thus perceived. 
. . . Writers . . . are accustomed to treat the doc- 
trine as actually made by the philosophical school 
which taught it. Yet the evidence here brought for- 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 79 

ward shows it to be really the savage doctrine of 
object-souls, turned to a new purpose as a method of 
explaining the phenomena of thought. ... To say- 
that Democritus was an ancient Greek is to say that 
from his childhood he had looked on at the funeral 
ceremonies of his country, beholding the funeral sacri- 
fices of garments and jewels and money and food and 
drink, rites which his mother and his nurse could tell 
him were performed in order that the phantasmal 
images of these objects might pass into the possession 
of forms shadowy like themselves, the souls of dead 
men. Thus, Democritus, seeking a solution of his 
great problem of the nature of thought, found it by 
simply decanting into his metaphysics a surviving doc- 
trine of primitive savage animism. . . . Lucretius ac- 
tually makes the theory of film-like images of things 
(simulacra, membrana) account for both the appari- 
tions which come to men in dreams and the images 
which impress their minds in thinking. So unbroken 
is the continuity of philosophic speculation from sav- 
age to cultured thought. Such are the debts which 
civilized philosophy owes to primitive animism. ' ' 15 

These brilliant pages of a brilliant book have a 
significance for us in the course of the present enquiry 
which they have acquired since they were written ; and 
the last two sections of this work must needs return to 
them. By connecting the doctrine of object-souls with 
the first efforts of the Greek mind in formulating a 
coherent metaphysics, Tylor establishes many other 
links in that continuity between savage and civilized 
thought. Yet one must not allow these ideas wholly to 
submerge his mind. The whole significance of Protag- 



80 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

oras and his disciples, and of the Sophist teachings, 
lies just in the fact that they made the first definite 
attempt to get away from the animistic doctrine lin- 
gering over from savage times, and that this effort was 
one of the results of an elementary introspection. The 
endeavor of the Sophist to study mental life, by turn- 
ing toward inner experience, led to his first shadowy 
perception of subjectivity, and to a differentiation 
between that reality and the appearance with which 
men so often confounded it. Once men, through 
self -observation, began to perceive the illusory nature 
of much that had seemed to them real, and imbued 
with life, — once they had come to grasp the signifi- 
cance of their own state of mind, an immense stride 
had been made away from savagery. Just the differ- 
ence between the beliefs of to-day and those of the 
ancient or mediaeval world, lies in the fact that the 
modern mind is introspective enough to perceive the 
subjective nature of many of those impulses which, 
to the Greek, possessed an objective existence. 

Protagoras, therefore, marked an era in more senses 
than one. There is an especial suggestiveness in the 
fact that the teachings of the Sophists were received 
with general distrust. That there was, after all, but 
slight reason for holding Protagoras and his followers 
to constitute an influence toward public corruption, 
is of less interest than the fact that by public opinion 
they were so regarded. The antagonism which has been 
noted is thus seen to be no new antagonism ; it is a dis- 
like and distrust sprung up among that portion of 
mankind who are still to be found clinging instinc- 
tively to standards of the normal which have long 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 81 

ceased to obtain. Unquestionably, the Sophistical doc- 
trines tended toward the destructive effects inherent 
in any broad, general scepticism ; and apparently they 
failed to satisfy the robust mental needs of their 
day. 16 

The present writer, in a former volume, 17 commented 
on the fact that no definitive history of the subjective 
trend in literature has been written, and that its ori- 
gins remain complex and obscure. What is true of 
subjectivity in general, is true of introspection in 
particular. The omission is of importance, because, 
the more one studies the subject, the more it seems as 
though a history of introspection involves the ap- 
proach of philosophy from a new direction. For 
what, after all, is philosophy, if it be not our intellec- 
tual effort to systematize all our conclusions respecting 
the phenomena of life and nature, which seem to us 
so capricious and inexplicable ? And of these phenom- 
ena, those proceeding out of our own consciousness, 
and constituting our own personality, will ever be 
the most vital. 

TVe know that it is practically impossible for philos- 
ophy to do without the consideration of these phenom- 
ena for any length of time. Their vitality remains 
unimpaired despite the philosophers who claim to ig- 
nore them, and to despise that psychology which is 
the science created for the purpose of dealing with 
them in detail. 

Such an one was Auguste Comte, who stated that 
1 ' after two thousand years of psychology no one prop- 
osition is established to the satisfaction of its fol- 
lowers.' ' 18 This belief is founded upon the idea that 



82 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

psychology is necessarily dependent upon metaphysics, 
and metaphysics upon introspection. Comte denies 
that the intellect can pause during its activities to ex- 
amine its processes. That such processes could come 
in the future to be automatically registered by means 
of machinery, Comte, of course, had no idea, since his 
work antedates the precise experiment of the psycho- 
logical laboratory. It may be true that, if we use the 
first term in its modern sense, psychology and meta- 
physics are no longer interdependent; they have, 
indeed, differentiated since the days of the St. Victors. 
And it remains equally true, be one 's conclusion what 
it may, that in the realm of metaphysics every theorist, 
from Descartes to Bergson, has been forced to rely 
upon introspection as an essential factor. Is Comte 
thereby justified in claiming that no progress has been 
made on this account ? 19 

The nature of any philosophical advance is two- 
fold; it may be an advance in idea, it may be an ad- 
vance in method. Comte may be right in denying 
that introspection, in se, has been the means of fur- 
nishing any ideas to philosophy; but without the use 
of introspective methods, few of those ideas could have 
obtained a hearing. In metaphysics, for instance, it 
is practically impossible to make any proposition clear, 
without a decided degree of "looking within,' ' in order 
to force one's hearer to "look within" also. The 
metaphysician must tell his reader what passes in his 
own mind, and the reader must "look within" and see 
if this be true. Explanations do not explain unless 
one's inner observation confirms them. A writer's 
statement of what he has found to be true in him- 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 83 

self has no vitality, no significance for the reader, 
until this reader pauses and looks inward to see if it 
be equally true in his own case. If it be not, he 
shakes his head and throws aside his book; if it be, 
the philosopher has gained an adherent. In any 
case, upon this faculty of introspection, the meta- 
physician is bound to rely — and it therefore follows 
as a corollary, that the degree of introspection prev- 
alent among certain societies and at certain times has 
had a powerful influence upon the spread of certain 
doctrines. Realizing this necessary reliance, the Ger- 
man school of philosophy has for more than a century 
made copious use of the first person, of the introspec- 
tive demand upon the reader, and of the argument 
by direct personal experience. Self-examination and 
introspection have been the very foundation stones of 
the German metaphysical philosophies. 20 

The connection between introspection and meta- 
physics is not closer than the connection of intro- 
spection with religion. The earliest possible exercise 
of this faculty in half-civilized man must have been 
to heighten any religious sentiment. So soon as any 
introspection is possible to a man, there springs up in 
his imagination the resultant conception of a dual or 
multiple personality. This is his way of defining 
what happens when he " looks inward" and perforce 
decides that there exists in himself a something which 
looks, and a something which is being looked at. 
The appreciation of this dual state is by no means 
confined to the metaphysician ; it is a world-wide and 
common possession of our humanity. Colloquial 
speech is full of idioms, phrases, and imagery which 



84 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

show its realization. In English, such sentences as, 
"It lies between me and my conscience, ' ' or, "You 
were more frightened than you realized,' ' give ex- 
pression to this conception of the many in the one. 
Now this very conception must necessarily have some 
religious significance. It is inextricably interwoven 
with ideas of good and evil, and with the perpetual 
struggle between darkness and light. Our selves were 
felt by the Church to hide innumerable puzzling and 
dangerous entities which could be routed only when 
we turned the light of self -observation into our darker 
corners. 

Hence the insistence early laid by the Church on 
the daily exercise of a stringent self-examination. It 
is commended as a discipline and as a means of 
perfection. 21 The great abbot, Eichard of St. Victor, 
whose doctrines had such vogue during the Eenais- 
sance, gave word to the cumulative thought of many 
centuries, when he wrote his reasons for introspection. 
"Who thirsts to see his God/' he cried, "let him 
cleanse his mirror and purify his spirit. After he 
hath thus cleared his mirror, long and diligently 
gazed into it, — a certain clarity of divine light begins 
to shine through upon him, and a certain immense ray 
of unwonted vision to appear before his eyes. From 
this vision the mind is wondrously inflamed. " Here 
are the introspective practices advocated as a means of 
contemplation, which has always been their first use to 
the mystical mind; — but Eichard goes somewhat fur- 
ther. ' ' If the mind would fain ascend to the height of 
science, let its first and principal study be to know 
itself, " 22 he says ; thus showing in his proper person 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 85 

that the effect of the earlier, rudimentary self -study 
leads to mysticism. 

In Jeremy Taylor 's ' ' Holy Living and Dying, ' ' the 
diligent and frequent scrutiny of self is recommended, 
as the fit preparation for each night's rest; "when we 
compose ourselves," as the good bishop quaintly puts 
it, ' ' to the little images of death. ' ' 23 But by his 
reference to Seneca throughout this chapter, the reader 
gathers that the influences traceable in Taylor's 
thought were stoical and pagan rather than Chris- 
tian and Catholic. In any case, it will be enough to 
show that the practice of self-examination is every- 
where not only generally preached, but was fol- 
lowed from earliest times. Ephraim Syrus is quoted 
as practicing it twice daily and as comparing him- 
self to the merchant who keeps a daily balance. 24 
Basil, Gregory the Great, and Bernard commend it. 25 
Origen held that self-knowledge through self -contem- 
plation was a part of the Divine Wisdom. 26 What 
Augustin felt we know. Jerome may not have 
preached a doctrine of self-study, but that he prac- 
ticed it his letters and treatises testify. 27 

The question of the immediate effect of Christian- 
ity and its teachings upon any latent introspective 
tendency, is one of great interest. Existence of this 
tendency at all must necessarily imply that man is no 
longer that savage "who took for granted the ordinary 
operations of his own mind. " 28 It must, therefore, 
have made its appearance comparatively late in his 
evolution, and it rather belongs to his equipment 
of maturity. Once it be assumed that a stage in 
mental growth was reached at which man's intellectual 



86 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

curiosity turned inward for its satisfaction, then not 
only the influence, but the acceptance of Christianity 
as a religion, becomes clear. Not only did the Chris- 
tian doctrine give impetus to all introspective prac- 
tices; but the latent tendency toward greater sub- 
jectivity of thought itself made for the success of the 
Christian faith. The rite of confession, with which 
we have just dealt in the preceding chapter, must 
have both heightened and directed such tendency. 

This idea of the importance of self was compara- 
tively new, for at least it had not been advocated in 
any coherent system among the ancients. The learned 
world of the first and second centuries, therefore, was 
without classical guide in the presence of this new 
force. Plato had depreciated the Ego, which he 
taught also it was healthy to ignore. The Christian 
philosopher, while he might believe with Pascal that 
"Le Moi est haissable," yet constantly magnified the 
Ego by discussing and cataloguing its iniquities. 29 
When to save his own soul became man's first busi- 
ness, he must needs know that soul, must study, must 
examine it. Prescribed as a duty, introspection be- 
came at once a main characteristic of religious life. 
Those great contemplatives and saints, upon whose 
guidance the whole of early Christianity depended, 
established the cult of introspection and introspective 
practices. It seems as though they must have recog- 
nized as a truth the generalization "that the senti- 
ment of religion is in its origin and nature purely 
personal and subjective." 30 

That the tendency toward subjectivity was present 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 87 

to assist the spread of Christianity, we know by its 
appearance under other shapes during the same cen- 
turies, and chiefly by its government of certain 
markedly non-Christian philosophies and philosophers. 
A favorite assumption on the part of some Church 
historians holds that the introspective tendency in the 
work of Seneca or of Marcus Aurelius is accounted for 
by their real but concealed sympathy with certain 
Christian doctrines. The world's general intellectual 
disposition to "look within,' ' which disposition had its 
religious as well as its philosophical side, would ap- 
pear to be the more accurate explanation. Nor must 
it be forgotten that the Stoic doctrines by which these 
writers were influenced, were informed by a deep sense 
of moral responsibility which augmented the tend- 
ency. 31 To a serious nature, any introspective prac- 
tice intensifies the importance of conduct, independ- 
ently of the religious rite to which he may be accus- 
tomed. Seneca 32 advocates self -study as a personal 
duty. "I use this power," he declares, "and daily 
examine myself when the light is out and my wife is 
silent. I examine the whole day that is past . . . 
and consider both my actions and words. I hide 
nothing from myself; I let nothing slip, for why 
should I fear any of mine errors ? ' ' This last phrase 
is in the key of Rousseau — a valid justification for any 
self-analysis. More familiar to the reader, perhaps, 
are the passages in which Marcus Aurelius expresses 
the same influence at work upon his mental life. 33 The 
Greek Epictetus, 34 in the second century, held also, 
"The beginning of philosophy to him at least who 



88 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

enters on it in the right way ... is a consciousness of 
his own weakness," thus more or less predicating self- 
study. 

One evidence of the growth of subjective thought at 
this time, will be found when we turn to that group of 
philosophical writers, who, gathered in Alexandria, 
made the last definite, intellectual stand against the 
Christian doctrine. The Neo-Platonists have certain 
characteristics which later were to become loosely 
identified with Christianity ; but which in reality are 
but another manifestation of similar tendencies. 
Their mysticism is due less to the influence of Chris- 
tian mystics, than to the fact that it is sprung from 
a similar source. The reader will not forget — it is 
of even greater importance later in this discussion 
— that the first effect of all elementary or imperfect 
self-study is mysticism. The first emotion raised by 
any " looking inward" is wonder, and a sense that 
a new world has been opened to the traveller. Upon 
the path through this world — the via — only the mys- 
tically inclined sets forth — only the genuine mystic 
arrives at the goal. From the third to the fifth cen- 
turies, the Neo-Platonists, markedly influenced by 
their efforts at introspection, practically anticipated, 
in the person of Plotinus, the Christian mediaeval 
mysticism. For instance, it is recorded that four 
times in six years Plotinus attained to that ecstatic 
moment of union with God, which, first in the Mid- 
dle Ages, was called unification. 35 The doctrines of 
this philosophical school show introspective tenden- 
cies not unlike those of the Christian philosophy. 
The Enneads of Plotinus, by an analysis of the 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 89 

senses, by the thesis that to know the Divine is the 
property of a higher faculty, and one in which the 
subject becomes identified with its object, show the re- 
sult of a systematic attempt at psychological intro- 
spection. Once this fact is clear, Neo-Platonism 
ceases to seem fantastic or bizarre ; it becomes rather 
the logical effect from a cause. Any elementary 
introspection undertaken without scientific knowl- 
edge or guidance, is apt to lead the mind in the 
direction of transcendentalism. The mind's eye — 
" looking inward" — is confused by what it sees, by 
the action and interaction of the intellect, the senses, 
the emotions, and the will. How is the ignorant 
and inexperienced self -observer to differentiate? 
Since all is mystery, only mystery accounts for all. 
Thus we see in the fifth century that Proclus, 36 analyz- 
ing Plato's "Know Thyself,' ' appears to take for 
granted that to look truly within is to provide the 
only means of looking truly without. Thus follow 
his ideas of Divine revelation, since the inward eye 
alone may catch the flash of divinely directed inspira- 
tion. By another route, the same conclusion is reached 
by the mediaeval mystic, when he, too, looking within, 
confuses and misinterprets the phenomena he beholds. 
Porphyry, in his letter to Anebo, and Iamblichus in the 
answer thereto, had already begun to formulate a sys- 
tematic demonology ; 37 but these ideas were succeeded 
by the more abstract ones of Proclus, — that last flame 
in the flickering Alexandrian lamp. 

Christianity, while embodying many of the inherent 
principles of Neo-Platonism, had an anchor in the form 
of its ethical conceptions, which were of the most 



90 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

objective and definite type. Among other advantages 
over Neo-Platonism, was that of the practical applica- 
bility of its philosophy to the various minds around 
it. Neo-Platonism held an introspection merely specu- 
lative, and as incapable of evolving any scientific 
method as it was of using any scientific material. As 
a philosophy it was necessarily sterile and perishable, 
but it holds interest for us as a landmark in the history 
of the subjective and introspective tendency. 

It has been noted that Augustin's mastery in the 
portrayal of psychical states "formed a new starting- 
point for philosophy." 38 The metaphysics of inner 
experience took their rise in his ability to use, with a 
fresh meaning, the suggestions of Plotinus. His in- 
tense consciousness of self, of personality, lifts him 
above the mists of his time ; while by his doubts and 
fears, he repeats the " Cogito ; ergo sum" of Descartes. 
Augustin, the first great Christian psychologist, uses 
with the vitality of genius the tentative or ill-defined 
ideas prevalent in his day; and through him Chris- 
tianity came to absorb the suggestions of Neo-Plato- 
nism. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the di- 
rect effect of the introspective tendency upon Chris- 
tianity is as marked as the effect, a little later, of 
Christian teaching upon introspection. In showing 
man how to preserve "the reverent relation to his own 
past," 39 there is added to the need of "looking 
within" that other need of looking backward, of sur- 
veying the whole of one's life as a process, divinely 
guided, and with salvation for an object. Thus, from 
the Christian standpoint, no duty is more religious 
than introspection; and no practices testify more 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 91 

deeply to the religious import of life than do self- 
study and self-examination. 

Before proceeding further, it would seem necessary 
to look a little more closely into the nature of that 
self -consciousness from which, according to Schopen- 
hauer, 40 we proceed. No longer is Schopenhauer held 
to be our guide, yet it is important that we should 
know something more of our self-consciousness. How 
has it been observed and how determined? Until the 
last century, all theories on the subject must have 
been necessarily a priori. There is hardly a portion 
of the body, from the spine to the pineal gland, which 
has not in turn been named as the seat of self -con- 
sciousness, or the Ego. 41 When one reads some of 
these theories, one is not amazed at Comtek estimate 
of psychology; and even to-day, in the face of more 
precise experiment, one is constantly confronted by 
expressions which show how little has really been ac- 
complished. 

"Man by the very constitution of his mind," says 
Caird 42 ". . . can look outwards . . . inwards, and 
upwards. He is essentially self -conscious " ; and 
again: "Man looks outward before he looks inward, 
and looks inward before he looks upward." This is 
more antithetical than accurate. Tylor and others 
would seem to show beyond dispute that man looks up- 
ward before he looks inward ; and scientific observation 
adds in her turn that once he begins to look inward, 
then he rarely comes again to look upward in the same 
way. Introspection and introspective habits have a 
way of absorbing a man's religious energies, caus- 
ing him to watch and follow the religious life wholly as 



92 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

within himself. Fascinated by the inward stir and 
tumult, he lifts his eyes from it no more, but passes 
through the world listening only to the inward voice, 
seeing only the inward vision. The outer world, the 
world outside of self, is very dim and insubstantial 
to such an one, who to many of us has represented our 
so-called highest religious type — the mystic or con- 
templative. Such were the two St. Victors, the Ab- 
bots Hugh and Eichard, in whose ideas mysticism and 
philosophy were blended. 43 Now the highest type of 
metaphysical philosopher resembles the religious mys- 
tic so much in his method, that we are apt to call him 
mystical, when we really do not mean mystical but 
rather introspective. Both of them are attempting the 
same thing, to obtain truth by watching their own 
processes and seeing what particular truth sought is 
thereby revealed to the watcher; and either one may 
succeed in proportion as he is able to recognize the 
different elements constituting his self -consciousness. 
How is he able to do this % . 

The study of mental processes is a recent one, for it 
is practically only since the experiments of the modern 
psychological laboratory that science has even been 
willing to declare what is truth and what illusion, what 
is fact and what fallacy in the region of mind. For 
centuries men worked perforce in the dark, since by 
its very constitution the brain cannot explain itself, 
and, when passive, no organ gives less hint of its meth- 
ods. 44 Hence, the world failed to connect the brain 
with feeling at all (which was supposed to be seated in 
the bowels, or, later, in the heart), until a compara- 
tively recent date. When Paul Broca 45 gave to the 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 93 

world, in 1861, his discovery of the activities in that 
convolution which now bears his name, he did much 
more than merely to determine which region of the 
brain governed our speech. He gave a starting-point 
for other investigations into the various brain-regions, 
ideas regarding which had remained in confusion 
since the phrenological fallacies of Gall. 

It is not for us to lead the student through the 
fascinating by-paths of mental physiology, to the con- 
flicts which still rage upon the subjects of Personality 
and Self-Consciousness. Space and authority are lack- 
ing here for any proper treatment of themes so per- 
plexing. Rather will we ask of him to give his atten- 
tion to some of the views expressed by the psychologist 
regarding the results obtained by the use of introspec- 
tion in this field. It is true that a purely introspective 
method has been held to resemble that of ' ' a man who 
tries to raise himself by his own boot-straps " ; 46 but 
it is also true that but for an original faculty and 
desire of " looking within," we should never know we 
had any self-consciousness or personality at all. The 
savage is unaware of any self, until his first pause of 
elementary introspection brings that fact to his atten- 
tion. One observes, moreover, that until he attains to 
that point of self -consciousness, any deliberate progress 
in any given intellectual direction is impossible to him. 
The first introspection, therefore, with its concom- 
itant first self-consciousness, is a crucial moment in the 
history of mind. During that moment the human in- 
tellect crossed at one leap the major part of the dis- 
tance which lies between ourselves and such a creature 
as the Neanderthal man. 



94 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

"The existence of which we are the best assured and 
which we know the best," says a recent philosopher, 
"is incontestably our own, since of all other objects we 
have notions which one might judge exterior and 
superficial, while we perceive ourselves interiorly and 
profoundly." 47 

This consciousness of self has been given concrete 
illustration by a number of self -students, whose obser- 
vations have been noted in a previous book. 48 The 
profundity and power of their interior realization has 
been found to produce a species of terror, an emotion 
both individual and indescribable, whose roots strike 
into primal depths. The boy who cried out at one in- 
stant, "I am a Me"! 49 was experiencing a crisis not 
only individual, but racial and primitive; and it is a 
crisis brought about by the first attempt at introspec- 
tion. 

Since the result of this first introspection is ac- 
companied by decided and characteristic emotion, the 
act remains significant in the history of individual 
mental development. To many natures it points a 
crisis, and such natures come to it as the traveller 
stumbles upon a forgotten sign-board, half -obliterated 
by a thicket of newer growth. Philosophy, imperson- 
ating the surveyor of this strange country, must take 
account of such crucial impulses. And there are other 
reasons why the philosopher still clings to the intro- 
spective method, despite the continually narrowing 
limitations prescribed by science. The reader will find 
in the history of philosophy something of the struggle 
to escape from introspection and to provide other 
means, because of the realization that interior phe- 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 95 

nomena are so much less susceptible of direct observa- 
tion than are exterior phenomena. 50 

Yet this realization was long in coming, and there 
was a period in the world's history when the interior 
phenomena must have seemed the clearer of the two. 
Scholars now unite in thinking that the first attempts 
at what we call modern psychology, took their rise in 
the abbey of St. Victor, under the efforts of those great 
mystics known as the Victorines. The first of these 
men, Hugh of St. Victor, was held by the Middle Ages 
so high as an authority, that he received the name 
of the ' ' second Augustin. ' ' His works are quoted by 
every great writer and doctor of the time, since his 
attempt to formulate a system of mystical philosophy 
appealed at once to the intellect and to the piety 
around him. Even to-day, if the mysticism of Hugh 
seems naif, his accent is still that of a spiritual force. 
"All the world," he wrote, "is a place of exile to 
philosophers," and to live content in this exile, he 
believes should be man's aim. Undoubtedly, his gen- 
eral transcendental doctrine has had more listeners 
than his purely philosophical doctrine. Naturally a 
delicate, an exalted temperament, he made the strong- 
est effort to combine the floating mystical ideas of the 
day into a working system. Hugh took from Dionysius 
and applied to the mystical life, the idea of "spiritual 
grades or steps, ' ' by whose aid the soul was to mount 
up to that ineffable union with God which is conceived 
as the final stage in the mystical way. By such means, 
he endeavored to intellectualize the entire scheme of 
mysticism, substituting for the three usual steps of 
purgation, illumination, and union, three other steps of 



96 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

cogitation, meditation, and contemplation. Any at- 
tempt to systematize the indefinable is foredoomed to 
failure, but Hugh and his successors reached a primary 
consciousness of inner experience. 51 With constant 
delicate perception and feeling, through constant self- 
study and self-analysis, this introspective habit de- 
veloped powers of self -observation till then unknown. 
The history of one's soul became the most important 
of all histories, and through the need of salvation 
there arose a need of psychology. 

The successor and nephew of Hugh of St. Victor, the 
abbot Richard, carried out the psychological work of 
his master in a manner yet more detailed, and with 
results even more far-reaching. Taking for his great 
book a text from Psalms, lxvii, 28 (in the Vulgate), 
"There is Benjamin, a youth in ecstasy of mind," 
Richard of St. Victor takes the type of an ecstatic as 
being the highest possible to humanity. He thus laid 
himself open to all that rational criticism of the mys- 
tical life, which later ages cannot forbear. Such criti- 
cism will be given expression in another section of this 
book, for our purpose is to consider him at the moment 
merely in the character of an embryonic psychologist. 
"Full knowledge of the rational spirit is a great and 
high mountain/ ' is Richard's teaching; and the study 
of self becomes a prerequisite to an entrance upon the 
Via Mystica. Moreover, he developed the system of 
his predecessor into a still more minute elaboration 
of grades and steps, by which very definition real psy- 
chology was considerably advanced. The symbols, the 
analogies used by Richard of St. Victor, — such as his 
comparison of the thoughts in the contemplative mind 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 97 

to a flock of little birds, ever wheeling and returning, 
—all have suggestiveness from a psychological point 
of view. 52 

That psychology made such strides in the work of 
the Victorines was possible only because of their con- 
tinued introspection, applied steadily in the direc- 
tion of religious experience. The use of the intro- 
spective methods continued until the advance of the 
exact sciences began to impose on them certain nec- 
essary limitations. Then arose a conflict out of which 
— at the beginning of the last century — developed a 
reaction, not only against the methods, but against 
psychology itself. 

It has been noted how Comte 's theory regarded the 
psychology of his day. Kant 53 expressed similar 
doubt, if less formally, while yet the very habit of his 
mind was profoundly subjective. The French phi- 
losopher characteristically suggested substituting for 
introspection the classification and analysis of human 
phenomena, which is, in truth, much according to the 
modern plan. Herbart, 54 by his effort scientifically to 
reduce consciousness to its simplest elements, opened 
the door for the experimental psychology of to-day. 
The feeling among philosophers seems to be that 
to achieve valid results by introspective methods, 
we should regard ourselves first of all in the nature 
of automata, and then, having registered the effects of 
our automatic behavior, bring those effects under the 
observation of our conscious intellect. Once its defi- 
nite limitations be understood, true introspection re- 
tains its value as a means of securing data. For even 
if a man really believes with Taine, 55 that "Nul ceil 



98 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

ne peut se voir soi-meme," yet he cannot deny that 
there are moments in his life when the veil between 
him and himself is lifted. If every person now living 
were to contribute one single fact about himself, the 
total result would be heterogeneous, indeed, but it 
would still be data. Our tendency, therefore, should 
be not to disdain introspection in psychology as value- 
less, but rather to limit its observation to pre-deter- 
mined fields ; remembering that ' * no interpretation can 
be arrived at without the direct cognition of the facts 
of consciousness obtained by means of introspection, 
aided by experiment. ' ' 56 

Training, of course, is of the utmost importance in 
this regard. As introspection grows less fortuitous, 
and, being trained, becomes more accurate, as the 
mind, "looking within," knows when to look and for 
what objects, then will science be aided and not merely 
hampered by the contribution. Meanwhile, the reader 
will have recognized : First, the presence of the sub- 
jective and introspective trend as indicating a certain 
stage in the evolution of human thought. Second, the 
developing and heightening influence of introspection 
itself on all religious sentiment. And when these two 
ideas shall have been confirmed by the third and most 
important, namely, that an elementary introspection 
will lead the subject inevitably toward mysticism and 
toward transcendentalism, the purpose of this exami- 
nation will have been, in the main, accomplished. 
Aided by these conclusions, the reader should at least 
be better able to understand his own nature in the 
different stages of its growth and to see in the history 
of introspection, scientifically considered, nothing less 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 99 

than the movement of the human intellect toward ma- 
turity. 

It may be well to ask what facts can the introspec- 
tion of the past be said to have contributed? If it 
has done nothing else, it has at least furnished a 
starting-point for all our modern conceptions of self- 
consciousness and identity. Every self-student is 
aware that his looking within has given him a number 
of new ideas, together with the power to differentiate 
his old ideas. For instance, he was probably unaware 
of the difference between consciousness and self-con- 
sciousness until absorbed in the effort of mental con- 
centration which continuous introspection involves. 
Then he notes ' ' a succession of ideas which adjust and 
readjust themselves, ' ' 57 which he had not before no- 
ticed and in which there is very little actual self -con- 
sciousness. In ordinary objective life, the one state 
practically includes the other. Another contribution 
to thought which we owe to introspection alone, is the 
better definition of all our simple concepts; and the 
discrimination between the various parts of our more 
complex concepts. Without a systematic introspection 
this discrimination would have been impossible; and 
Fichte notes it as present even in the most fleeting 
self -observation. 58 

Moreover, without the introspection of the past we 
should never have been able to see and to differentiate 
between the various elements of the Ego. Observing 
the Self of another person does not readily aid one in 
such differentiation, because, seen from our own sphere 
of identity, his sphere of identity appears to be far 
more homogeneous and unified than it really is. 



100 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

^Without looking within, the psychologist 59 would never 
have been able to observe the Ego divided into the 
several social, material, and spiritual selves, with their 
differing constituents and qualities. The theories de- 
scribing these Selves and accounting for their fission, 
change too fast for the average reader to keep pace 
with them; but his own "looking within" is sufficient 
to convince him that there are many selves in one. He 
perforce returns again and again to this conception, 
however he may try to get away from it, and he is just 
as dependent upon it to explain himself to himself and 
others to himself, as he was in the days of Augustin. 
Moreover, this is quite as true of the most vividly 
objective person among us, as of a Cardan or a Maine 
de Biran. ' ' A psychological sense of identity, ' ' to use 
James's phrase, is common to all of us, and in all ages. 
Placed as such a sense is, just beyond the easy reach 
of our minds during the daily round, yet it is within 
the grasp of any and all of us, once interest or need 
has made it plain. 

Metaphysicians are constantly reminding us that 
however imperfect the instruments at hand may be, 
yet we can hardly afford to discard them, while there 
remains any likelihood of their becoming more valu- 
able through evolution or by training. As an instru- 
ment, introspection has undoubtedly so become. 
"The empirical conception of consciousness," says 
Villa, 60 "is that of the consciousness of self. It is 
characterized by the fact that its content is very re- 
stricted, though vivid, consisting of organic sensations, 
together with a particular feeling of activity owing 
to which we 'feel' that we are a spontaneously acting 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 101 

personality. ... As the complexity of our mental 
processes increases, the consciousness of our personality 
becomes clearer and extends itself to a greater num- 
ber of phenomena." 

This excellent definition is of interest here from the 
fact that its conclusions could have been reached only 
through means provided by the introspective observer 
and his introspections. It gives us a warrant for ex- 
amining in detail that type of document from which 
science has heretofore derived much of the mate- 
rial respecting ourselves. This material has been 
cast into various moulds ; it is sometimes in the shape 
of fact, sometimes in the shape of theory. The pres- 
ence in the world of the subjective philosopher, seems 
to be the manifestation of an introspective tendency 
in our intellectual life ; and has, moreover, an impor- 
tance for this study, from its close connection with the 
religious tendency. Types of an introspective cast 
have always preserved an influence over the world of 
thought, and a consideration of them has all the value 
of a concrete example. 

In dealing with those individual cases of intro- 
spective writing, whose influence has been so marked 
at different times, upon literature, art, and philosophy, 
some selection must needs be made, if only to avoid 
repetition. Many of the names considered are more 
accurately to be analyzed on another account. Au- 
gustin, for instance, is not the less introspective be- 
cause he is the more religious; but citations from his 
" Confessions' ' are used so constantly in the body of 
this work, that it were superfluous to repeat them. 
The same is true of one or two other cases, who are 



102 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

to be dealt with more fully under separate heads. 
Our endeavor in this section should rather be to clas- 
sify and to analyze, for purposes of comparison, those 
self -students whose work, while exhibiting equal sin- 
cerity and candour, is yet not directed by a purely 
religious impulse, nor strictly affiliated with religious 
tenets. Such analysis and comparison will aid us to 
compute the sum of the purely religious impulse in 
the introspective document and the amount and force 
of the purely introspective tendency in the religious 
confession. Some confusion has attended opinion on 
these points, and critics therefore have come to discuss 
them largely according to personal likes and dislikes. 
Thus we find Caird terming that important element of 
self-examination in religion (without which, as we 
have seen, the religious idea could hardly have devel- 
oped to meet our latter-day spiritual uses) as "the 
great plague of our spiritual life ' ' ; 61 and this opinion 
is shared by many a devout theologian. Study there- 
fore of introspection as introspection, may be of value 
in clarifying our ideas. 

The use of this element in philosophy — when it does 
not take the direct and formal shape of autobiography 
— usually takes that of personal explanation. Much 
of the material respecting ourselves which has been 
yielded through introspective methods, has been over- 
looked by the student in his concentration on theory. 
He reads the "Discours" of Descartes for its central 
theme rather than for the light which it may cast on 
the author's mind and personality. Therefore, much 
significant matter lies buried under the drifting sands 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 103 

of controversy, or is lost like the Neo-Platonists be- 
neath some abandoned philosophic structure. 

Present-day English science shows the marked effect 
of the introspective tendency. Guided by the idea 62 
that a natural history of one's self is a proper comple- 
ment to one 's system of thought, the group of writers 
clustering around the crisis of 1850 have practically 
without exception left definite personal records. One 
type of mind, such as G. J. Romanes, expresses similar 
ideas in an intimate "Diary," 63 while yet another, 
following Descartes, 64 will incorporate the result of 
his introspection into the body of his thesis. An 
Italian critic 65 has commented with penetration on 
this instinct of the robust intelligence to observe itself 
and study the secret of its being. This tendency is 
plainly traceable throughout the philosophical sys- 
tems of Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Reid, and Hartley, 
where it forms part of their method of reaching and 
impressing other minds. 66 

It is not, however, in England that the subjective 
and introspective philosophy is to be found in its typi- 
cal completeness. German metaphysicians may dif- 
fer widely as to conclusions, but they are practically 
of one mind as to their method. In German thought, 
the subjective tendency seemed to become even more 
the property of philosophical doctrine than of re- 
ligious doctrine, since the number of these documents 
outweighs the number of religious confessions. Most 
of the former display the same motives which under- 
lie the latter, such as dissatisfaction with self, and the 
effort to comprehend the basic principles of conscious- 



104 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

ness. German subjective philosophy, together with 
all modern philosophy, dates from the sixteenth cen- 
tury and the work of Descartes. 67 Certain earlier 
names shine out from the vast epoch of the Middle 
Ages, but they do not dim that of the great French- 
man. One of these — Al-Ghazzali, 68 the Arabian — has 
left us a philosophical introspective record which de- 
serves to be compared with the "Discours de la 
Methode. ' ' Neither must we forget the sceptic monk, 
Giordano Bruno, 69 who, in his various replies made 
during his trial before the Inquisition, developed, if 
somewhat baldly, the theme and outline of an intro- 
spective philosophy. He is " entirely ready to give 
an account of myself, ' ' 70 as he puts it ; and does de- 
scribe his change of view; how " alone retaining the 
crucifix" he tried to turn his religion into a philos- 
ophy. But in respect of our present investigation, 
the ideas of Bruno are not of sufficient weight to 
detain us longer. 

The similarity which has been noticed between the 
" Discours " of Descartes and the " Confession" of 
Al-Ghazzali, 71 suggests at once a possible debt of the 
Western to the Eastern mind. Did the introspec- 
tive philosophy take its rise among those peoples, 
naturally meditative, naturally prone to abstract con- 
ceptions? The question is not one to be lightly an- 
swered. Unquestionably, the habit of certain highly 
introspective practices had been developed in India, 
in Persia, and in Arabia, for centuries past. One 
might expect, therefore, to find elaborate systems 
of subjective philosophy permeating the arid and 
eager Western world from this ancient source. 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 105 

The reason why such has not been the case would 
seem to lie in the predominance, over East and 
West alike, of the huge and objective intellect of 
Aristotle, whose systems dwarfed for centuries any 
independent thought, while they absorbed, in exege- 
sis and elucidation, the best minds of Arabia as of 
Europe. 

The work of Al-Ghazzali, in the twelfth century, is 
an indication of a fresh effort at mental independ- 
ence. The Aristotelians, the Platonists, and the Neo- 
Platonists seem to have absorbed the world's stock 
of ideas, as, later, the Schoolmen seem to have ab- 
sorbed its stock of mental energy. All the world 
over, men were but entombing their minds in those 
huge and futile folios, which stand to-day, like for- 
gotten sarcophagi, the objects of our curious and 
reverent pity. In such a record as this Arabian 
sage 's, may be read the attempt to come out from un- 
der the shadow of those traditions into the light of 
reality and experience. 

"Tu m'as prie, 6 mon frere en religion, de te faire 
connaitre les secrets et le but des sciences reli- 
gieuses . . ." he begins, and adds, further, that he 
will depict his own sufferings in his search for truth. 72 
His was suffering, indeed, because it led in the di- 
rection of a general scepticism and negation, a state 
even harder to bear during the twelfth century than 
in our own. "I have interrogated the beliefs of each 
sect," proceeds the Arabian, "and scrutinized the 
mysteries of each doctrine. . . . There is no philoso- 
pher whose system I have not fathomed, nor theologian 
the intricacies of whose doctrine I have not followed 



106 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

out. . . . The thirst for knowledge was innate in me 
from an early age; it was like a second nature im- 
planted by God. . . . Having noticed how easily the 
children of Christians become Christians, and the 
children of Moslem embrace Islam ... I was moved 
by a keen desire to learn what was this innate disposi- 
tion in the child, the nature of the accidental be- 
liefs imposed on him by the authority of his par- 
ents . . . and finally the unreasoned conviction which 
he derives from their instructions. ' ' 73 

The idea with which Al-Ghazzali followed this sur- 
vey of conditions is simply to ascertain "what are the 
bases of certitude.' ■ Misled by false appearance, by 
the illusions attendant on observing the action of the 
senses, he finds every doctrine around him in every 
direction untrustworthy, and so falls into the deepest 
doubt. During this state, which lasted about two 
months, he presents to our view all the familiar phe- 
nomena of so-called religious depression, terminating 
in a complete nervous prostration with aphasia. 
"But God/' he fervently exclaims, "at last deigned to 
heal me of this mental malady; my mind recovered 
sanity and equilibrium. " 74 And, turning his ener- 
gies toward a careful introspection, Al-Ghazzali found 
that it led him directly toward the mysticism of the 
Sufis. 

It will not be forgotten that the effect of all ele- 
mentary and untrained introspection, whether in reli- 
gion or philosophy, is inevitably in the direction of 
mysticism, and nothing so clearly shows that four 
hundred years have passed between Al-Ghazzali and 
Descartes as the comparison of their conclusions in 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 107 

this regard. "Without insisting too closely thereon, 
it will be admitted that the aim of both philosophers 
was identical in their search for Truth. 75 Each be- 
gins his work with a personal statement of his fitness 
for this search, his position at the present stage, and 
the further aims of his mind. That there existed a 
strong similarity in their mental situations, a glance 
will show. "J'ai ete nourri aux lettres des mon en- 
fance," writes Descartes. ". . . Mais sitot que j'eus 
acheve tout ce cours d 'etudes . . . je me trouvais 
embarrasse de tant de doutes et erreurs, qu'il me 
semblait n 'avoir fait aucun profit/ ' 76 And again, 
on the study of philosophy, he observes that "con- 
siderant combien il peut y avoir de diverses opinions 
touchant une meme matiere, qui soient soutenues par 
des gens doctes, sans qu'il en puisse avoir jamais plus 
d'un seul qui soit vraie, je reputais presque pour faux 
tout ee qui n'etait que vraisemblable. ,, 77 

Here stand these two young men, each in his early 
twenties, side by side on the same path of enquiry. 
Here their ways part, led by the vital and significant 
influences developed by four hundred intervening 
years. The Oriental mind, interrogating each dogma 
in turn and finding all false, bends aside in despair to 
take refuge in that perpetual mystery which opens be- 
fore the inward-looking eye. "To believe in the 
Prophet is to admit that there is above intelligence 
a sphere in which are revealed to the inner vision 
truths beyond the grasp of intelligence, " 78 is the 
practical conclusion of the Arabian. 

The Occidental mind, interrogating each dogma in 



108 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

turn and finding all false, turns aside in hope, and 
bends all its energies into the search for method. 79 
The man resolves to study himself and to conduct his 
own reason, for the purpose of evolving a method 
which will lead him in the direction of the truth. 
Let us abandon, he remarks, these problems which 
appear so distant and insoluble, and devote our 
energy to the best means of reaching them by regular 
steps. "Meme je ne voulus point commencer a re- 
jeter tout-a-fait aucune des opinions qui s'etaient 
pu glisser autrefois en ma eonnaissance," he writes, 
* ' [mais] chercher la vraie methode pour parvenir a la 
eonnaissance de toutes les choses dont mon esprit 
seroit eapable. ,,8 ° Descartes is thus separated from 
Al-Ghazzali by his conception of and his insistence on 
the importance of method. 

It will be asked in what manner was the soil dur- 
ing these four hundred years prepared for the 
plough of such a mind as Descartes, and an answer 
must be, though all too briefly, suggested. The limi- 
tations imposed upon the present essay make it im- 
possible to treat at any length of those Renaissance dis- 
cussions between the Aristotelians and the Platonists 
on such ultimate questions as the nature and immor- 
tality of the soul, 81 by and through which our modern 
conceptions have been slowly evolved. Those con- 
troversies added to the world's stock of definitions at 
the same time that their use made flexible various 
types and forms of philosophy and metaphysics, in- 
cluding the introspective. The scientific self -study 
and autobiography also made its appearance to add to 
the world's stock of ideas. By the lives of Cellini 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 109 

and Cardan, the essays of Montaigne, and other simi- 
lar records, psychological introspection was developed 
from a rudimentary condition to a state of efficiency 
which made it a valuable tool in the hand of the 
science of that epoch. No longer elementary in char- 
acter, it ceased, as we see in the case of Descartes, to 
lead in the direction of mysticism and transcendental- 
ism. 

At the same time that the psychologist, in the per- 
son of Cardan, was endeavoring by close self -analysis 
to comprehend something of his own obscure problems, 
the idea of the value of such self-knowledge was 
slowly growing in the world's mind. The power and 
charm of Augustin, exerted during the early Middle 
Ages, 82 heightened this estimate of self-knowledge, 
while causing it to take its position as a department of 
science. Descartes, who, as we have read, had pur- 
sued all the philosophical doctrines prevalent during 
his youth, could not have failed to draw, from this 
development of self-knowledge, one of his greatest ele- 
ments of strength. His Augustin he must have read ; 
something he must have known of Nicholas Cusanus, 
and of Giordano Bruno. 83 Such earlier influences as 
the treatises of the Neo- Aristotelian, Pomponazzi, 84 for 
example, "the last of the Schoolmen," as he has been 
called, show the rationalistic tendencies at work upon 
men's minds, which cannot, either, wholly have es- 
caped Descartes. Pomponazzi 85 questioned the doc- 
trine of the immortality of the soul, denied that there 
are apparitions of the dead; emphasized the study 
of the history of religions, and concerned himself 
chiefly with the degree of the soul's relation to reason 



110 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

or intelligence. 86 Such a sceptical and subjective 
treatment of great problems bad a widespread effect 
upon men's attitude toward them, and prepared the 
way for a method based on pure introspection. 

These pages are not the place for a complete an- 
alysis of the Cartesian philosophy in all its far-reach- 
ing effects, nor would such analysis be of any real 
service to the present investigation. It were well, 
however, to point out that the introspectiveness of 
Descartes does not limit itself to the opening pages of 
description and examination. 87 On the contrary, it 
is interwoven with his thoughts both in the "Dis- 
cours" and in the "Meditations." It is condensed 
and expressed in that phrase, "Je pense, done je 
suis," 88 by which his philosophy is identified; it is 
employed on every page by way of definition, and in 
one of his responses, 89 he avers that it is not possi- 
ble for him to separate his thought from himself. 
The one thing of which he is entirely conscious, as 
Augustin was, is himself: and thus, both in manner 
and in matter, he remains the distinguished example 
of the philosophical introspective type. 

It is natural that such intense introspection as re- 
sides in the manner of Descartes should be followed 
by a reaction, and this reaction came in Spinoza and 
in Leibnitz. Nevertheless, so deep and far-reaching 
was the Cartesian philosophy, that it ushered in what 
has been called "The Age of Enlightenment," 90 when 
man became interested above all things in himself, 
and in the workings of his own mind. Eeaction, 
therefore, could not carry men very far from an atti- 
tude which still maintained for them its freshness and 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 111 

force. Thus the eighteenth century became an age 
of personal affirmation and explanation, when the dis- 
covery made by philosophy and expressed in literature 
by Rousseau was freshly for each man: "Si je ne 
vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre." 91 

Not in his two great ' ' Critiques ' ' 92 is the intro- 
spective tendency of Kant to be noted ; but rather in 
his " Prolegomena of a Future Metaphysic" wherein 
he avows that "Hume interrupted my dogmatic slum- 
ber." 83 Much of his personal introspection is frag- 
mentary and incomplete, but the tendency is so 
marked as to cause him to compare himself to Rous- 
seau. 04 

Immediately following Kant, German philosophy 
entered upon its great subjective period, when, aided 
by the influence of Locke and certain others of the 
English school, introspection became generally diffused 
throughout the whole realm of metaphysics. Its re- 
sults, in a sense, are assumed, and the separate de- 
velopment of that branch of science which we call 
psychology, is not the least of them. 95 From this 
time, the psychologists became a separate group of in- 
vestigators, and the value of introspection in psy- 
chology fluctuates, as we have seen, according to the 
opinions generally prevailing amongst the different 
groups. 

Philosophically speaking, the introspective tendency 
reached its height in Fichte, who, in his "Science of 
Knowledge/' bases his entire doctrine on subjective 
idealism. "If I abstract myself from thought," he 
writes, "and look simply upon myself, then I myself 
become the object of a particular representation." 98 



112 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Thus making himself his own object, Fichte takes 
what he considers to be the first important step. 
"The question has been asked," he proceeds, "what 
was I before I became self-conscious? The answer 
is, I was not at all, for I was not I. The Ego is, only 
in so far as it is conscious of itself. ' ' 97 Here is in- 
trospective doctrine of the type of Augustin carried to 
a higher degree of development. In the "Destina- 
tion of Man," Fichte still further elaborates the re- 
sults, direct and indirect, of his systematic looking- 
inward. "There was a time, so others tell me . . . 
in which I was not, and a moment in which I began 
to be. I then only existed for others, not yet for 
myself. Since then, myself, my conscious being, has 
gradually developed itself, and I have discovered in 
myself certain faculties, capacities . . . and natural 
desires." 98 "My existence must necessarily be aware 
of itself — for therefore do I call it mine. . . . By 
the limitations of my own being I perceive other 
existences which are not me. . . . The foundation of 
my belief in the existence of an external world lies 
in myself and not in it . . . but in the limitations of 
my own being. In this manner I obtain the idea of 
other thinking beings like myself. ' ' " 

Fichte thus finds in self-examination the beginning 
of all philosophy, and in his work it touches the 
highest fruitfulness. Generalized later in the work 
of Schelling, 100 it became much less significant. Still 
later, Schopenhauer 101 displays the introspective 
tendency in scattered, incoherent paragraphs, ca- 
pricious, and lacking in constructive power. 

Nietzsche, 102 in our own day, made an attempt to 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 113 

return to scientific introspection; but the mental 
conditions were untoward, and his efforts ended in 
a mere insane shouting of "I am this" and "I am 
that." 

Sporadic minor examples — such as that Novalis 
[Friedrich von Hardenberg] to whom Carlyle con- 
secrates an essay — exist here and there in Germany 
and in Scandinavia ; 103 but the influence of Comte, 
which, as we remember, was antagonistic, caused a 
second reaction from introspective methods in psy- 
chology. That this reaction has reached its limits 
there are several indications at present, among which 
is the vogue attendant on the metaphysics of Henri 
Bergson. 

In literature as in philosophy, the forces underly- 
ing the Renaissance gave an impetus to all forms of 
expression, subjective as well as objective. The 
Italians first indicate this movement ; among them are 
to be found the earliest examples of what later was to 
become a familiar literary type. Such Florentine 
domestic chronicles as that of Lapo da Castiglionchio, 
for instance (to name one of many during the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries), display qualities speedily 
to be developed and popularized into regular auto- 
biography. Italy resembled a youth but half-awak- 
ened, who looked eagerly around him upon a new 
and vigorous world. A passionate interest in general 
observation and description embraced the inner as 
well as the outer phenomena of life. Again men 
turned back to the great introspective leaders of 
Christian doctrine, striving through their eyes to 
look higher and lower and deeper than ever before. 



114 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

This newly aroused desire for knowledge led men far, 
and in directions as yet undreamt-of. 

"In the Middle Ages," writes one historian, "both 
aspects of consciousness — that which faces the world 
and that which looks toward man's own inner life, 
lay dreaming, or but half -awake, under a veil which 
shrouded them. ... In Italy first this veil was 
lifted . . . the things of this world generally began 
to be treated objectively; but at the same time the 
subjective asserted its rights ; man becomes a spiritual 
individuality and knows that he is such. ' ' 104 

These pages have already noticed how this spiritual 
individuality began to be evolved; how its growing 
introspective tendency led it to mysticism; and how, 
in turn, this mysticism heightened the introspection. 
The St. Victors show in a striking manner the inter- 
relation of these two influences on the religious mind, 
together with an intellectual attempt to formalize 
their results into a system. On the side purely sec- 
ular and profane, the introspective type was neces- 
sarily slower in its development, nor can it be de- 
tached from the study of religion until a period later 
in the history of literature. 

Dante has frequently been cited in this connection, 
but Dante, notwithstanding certain passages in the 
"Convito," must have been always an outward-look- 
ing, rather than an inward-looking, mind. The letter 
to Can Grande, for instance, is written on a personal 
subject, one near to religious experience, yet its tone 
remains impersonal and even abstract. 105 The "Vita 
Nuova" 106 is throughout handled in a manner curi- 
ously outward, — it is a setting for poetic jewels, a dec- 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 115 

orative framework for sonnet or hallata, rather than a 
spiritual self -study. The flame-color of the garment of 
Beatrice, the winged Love in a blaze of fire, — these 
are the images which dominated the imagination of 
its writer. True, Dante tells how his passion affected 
his health, and how his grief undermined it, but he is 
nowhere definitely personal ; he writes poetically, and 
he withholds the key to his conduct so effectually, that 
the whole tone has remained artificial. 

The mind of Dante was not made of modern stuff. 
However different his attitude from your true intro- 
spective, he yet belongs to the same spiritual family 
as that Francis who preached to the birds, as that 
Ubertino da Casale, whose meditations made 
him a member of the Holy Family, sitting at table 
with them. Even in the personal portions of the 
' ' Commedia, ' ' Dante's direct, concrete imagination 
displays the power of a mind turned outward. Not 
upon himself, but upon the world without, his gaze 
is fixed. His heaven and hell are distinct with the 
imagery of real things; they have the classes and 
circles and divisions of the visible universe; the 
empyrean itself shows a decorative plan. Their vivid- 
ness is due to this; it is the vividness of the Italian 
painters; while both belong to the unself-conscious 
and objective past. There are many to whom the 
sombre figure of the Florentine, in its fierce gloom 
and faith, serves to personify the Middle Ages. The 
chasm that separates Dante from Petrarch is wider 
than the width of years; it is the gulf between the 
ancient and the modern world. Boccaccio accused 
Petrarch of indifference toward the elder poet, and 



116 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

although Petrarch defends himself with skill in a 
long letter, yet the very terms of this defence show 
plainly that Dante's attitude of mind is as far from 
him as it is from ourselves. It has been said of 
Petrarch that he was not content to live unquestion- 
ingly, but must be constantly preoccupied with his own 
aims and motives. 107 His passion for the works of 
Augustin, and especially for the "Confessions," 
roused in him a desire for self-understanding which 
he enriched by a matured power of psychological 
analysis. 

"We have seen him already upon Mont Ventoux, 
smitten with wonder, not only at the wide sunny 
stretch of country, but also at the miracle of his be- 
holding self; and none of the thoughts and emotions 
roused in him by the sight are alien to our own ideas. 
He stands ever as an immortal Youth upon a mountain- 
top, to whom life opens a wider and wider prospect, 
while the centuries, rolling by, reveal shining peaks 
perpetually to be climbed. 

The introspective tone of Petrarch has throughout 
a literary quality. At no time does he show any an- 
ticipation of scientific self-study, of which Cardan, 
only two hundred years later, was to give so remark- 
able an example. The tone of the poet's " Epistle to 
Posterity, ' ' 108 is ceremonious and condescending, the 
facts are furnished to an admiring public by a cele- 
brated personage. "As to my disposition, I was not 
naturally perverse nor wanting in modesty, ' ' he says, 
noting also, "my youth was gone before I realized 
it . . . but riper age brought me to my senses. ' ' He 
tells of his quickness, comeliness, and activity ; how his 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 117 

health endured until old age brought "the usual train 
of discomforts ' ' ; and of his deep conviction that only 
"by a tardy consciousness of our sins we shall learn 
to know ourselves." One feels that this man wished 
posterity to remember the esteem in which he was held 
by the great of his own day ; and how, without regret, 
he had relinquished that popularity. 

Less formal are his letters, yet they, too, echo this 
successful assurance. So highly were they valued by 
the writer, that he spent six years editing them for 
publication, with the result that, however interesting, 
they lack spontaneity. 109 Not only are they intro- 
spective, they are often self-conscious. When he 
writes of, "my inexorable passion for work," or com- 
ments, "my mind is as hard as a rock," 110 the tone is 
that of the literary man, satisfying the curiosity of 
an eager and respectful public. 

The work which particularly concerns us here, is 
contained in a group of three dialogues to which he 
gave the title, "De Contemptu Mundi," while allud- 
ing to them also as his secret — ' ' Secretum Suum. ' ' 11X 
Both from a religious and an introspective aspect they 
have much importance for the present enquiry. They 
form indeed a confession, wherein the figure of Augus- 
tin plays the part of spiritual director. Composed in 
Petrarch's thirty-eighth year, they picture a man 
in conflict with his youthful errors and passions. In 
these dialogues, the poet, the lover, the courtier, give 
place to the student whose quenchless love of letters 
is the only mundane interest which a newly aroused 
religious feeling will allow him to indulge. 

"May God lead me," is his cry, "safe and sound 



118 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

out of so many crooked ways ; that I may follow the 
Voice that calls me; that I may raise up no cloud of 
dust before my eyes; and, with my mind calmed 
and at peace, I may hear the world grow still and 
silent, and the winds of adversity die away !" 112 

This, surely, is another man from him who told 
us with complacency that his intimacy was desired 
by noble persons ! And, moreover, it is in these very 
dialogues that we see the change accomplished. Truth 
herself, a dazzling angel, led Augustin to the per- 
plexed poet, saying that his sacred voice would surely 
bring peace to one so tossed, so troubled. And 
Petrarch warns us that this little book is not to be 
regarded critically, as are his other compositions, for it 
is written chiefly that he himself may renew, as often 
as need be, the salutary effects of the interview. The 
attack on himself is opened by an arraignment (placed 
in Augustin 's mouth) of his own worldliness and 
vanity. To this accusation he is depicted as listening 
in all humility. 113 By comparison with the younger 
Augustin drawn in the ' ' Confessions, ' ' his repentance 
seems less deep, his tears are less bitter, his clinging 
is closer to the world. Yet he avows: "I am made 
partaker of your conflict ... I seem to be hearing the 
story of myself . . . not of another's wandering, but 
my own. . . ," 114 

His defence of himself against the saint's accusa- 
tion appears of more strength to us to-day than it 
could to himself ; it prevails far more than he realized 
against the Augustinian asceticism. To our ideas, 
the great, busy, material world, and men's achieve- 
ments therein, possess a hold over the moral sense 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 119 

which they had not in the fourteenth century. In 
words spoken by Augustin, Petrarch draws an accu- 
rate picture of the ascetic system of the Middle Ages, 
as it appears to modern eyes. All unwittingly, he 
places the ethics of the past in antagonism to the 
ethics of the present. He argues for the life of 
moderation, reason, and energy, as against the life 
of fanaticism, superstition, and quiescence. He 
pleads for the mental images of life and light; while 
his Augustin, in all sternness, dwells on the power of 
those images of darkness and of death. If Petrarch 
makes the saint carry the day in this discussion, it is 
because Augustin, after all, expressed both the reli- 
gious and the moral ideals of the time. "I will not 
deny," Petrarch cries, "that you have terrified me 
greatly by putting so huge a mass of suffering before 
my eyes. But may God give me such plenteous 
mercy that I may steep my thoughts in meditations 
like these!" 115 

Dialogue second analyzes Petrarch's love of wealth 
and fame; while again the part he bears against 
Augustin represents the modern ideal. Doctrines of 
industry, activity, and study, are advanced against 
the saint's plea for passive renunciation. His figure 
of Augustin here is not wholly consistent; for, when 
he describes himself as suffering from a causeless and 
poetic melancholy, in which he morbidly took a false 
delight, 116 he suddenly changes the exhortations of 
the saint, from advising a constant meditation on 
the grave, to the urging of courageous cheerfulness. 
This very inconsistency has a lifelike quality ; though 
it is true that Petrarch's Augustin seems harsher than 



120 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

the Augustin we love. The progress of the composi- 
tion as a whole marks a growing absorption in its 
self -analysis, which tends to weaken the part borne 
therein by the saint. At the end, Petrarch erven al- 
lows himself the last word, for, although he is buffeted 
by the wind of argument, and stung by the arrows 
of Scripture, yet he stoutly declares that he can never 
relinquish his love of study. 

In this little work, introspection takes a large stride, 
and enters into possession of literature. It shows — 
as no other book could show — how the grasp of Augus- 
tin was on the very fibre of men's hearts and minds; 
how, like religion and like philosophy, literary ideas 
lay helpless in that grasp for centuries. But then 
Augustin is identified with the greater moments of 
life; he voiced its crucial struggles. Men like 
Petrarch turned his pages with tears and prayer; 
they could no more have read them from the 
coldly literary point of view than they could have 
read their Bibles. Moreover, the style of Augustin 's 
" Confessions " throughout is wonderfully delicate and 
colored, and the whole of that marvellous Tenth Book 
is written as though it were to be sung to the music 
of a harp. 

Life is seldom, after all, in the lyric mood; and as 
self -observation grew more frequent, the "looking- 
within" extended itself to the mere daily round of 
common thoughts and feelings. The Renaissance re- 
vived the sceptical spirit, it became the spectator, half- 
cynical, half-amused, of itself. Man was interested 
in man, going to and fro about his ordinary business. 
Until the fifteenth century, the disposition to look in- 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 121 

ward had been connected with religious discipline; 
and was associated with the practice of auricular con- 
fession, at that time firmly established in the Church. 
Once the introspective tendency transferred itself to 
the field of secular writing, it developed with such 
rapidity that by the sixteenth century there existed 
classic self -studies 117 with no religious feeling what- 
ever as their basis. 118 The rise of this tendency dur- 
ing the Renaissance may be noted in such writings as 
those of Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who afterward 
became Pope Pius II. He left much self -study in his 
"Commentary," in his letters, and in a "Retracta- 
tion," imitating Augustin. His temperament was 
primarily literary, cool, and sceptical, the latter to 
such an extent, indeed, that even when he was Pope, 
he observed that "a miracle should always be re- 
garded with mistrust.' ' * 19 In the personal parts of 
his "Commentary," as in his letters, he is extremely 
candid; especially concerning that period in his life, 
when, although neither a pious nor a fervent person, 
he desired to abandon his youthful errors. This 
change is expressed in words of sincere doubt and 
contrition. "I cannot trust myself," he sorrowfully 
writes, "to take a vow of continence." And again: 
"I have been a great wanderer from what is right, 
but I know it, and I hope the knowledge has not come 
too late." 120 

Papal responsibilities educated Eneas Sylvius into 
deeper seriousness than was his by nature. His ' ' Re- 
tractation" testifies to a sense of his own worldliness; 
and he asks that posterity remember him as Pius, 
rather than as Eneas. Throughout, he shows the crit- 



122 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

ieal habit of mind; and forms a significant link be- 
tween the ardent nature of such as Petrarch and that 
later introspective type, that smiling spectator of 
self, — -Montaigne. 

After the Renaissance, a nature like Montaigne's 
seems an embodied reaction. So much piety, so much 
fervor, so much intensity, so much art and color, and 
passion and energy and heat, — and then, Montaigne. 
He meets the mood of satiety for the first time in 
literature ; in him we see that the world has put forth 
too much force and, is tired; it is beginning to ask 
"Cm bono?" — and to be amused by its own activ- 
ity. This is his charm, his friendliness for us when 
we are weary of ardor. "With pipe and by the chim- 
ney-corner, a man longs most for the society of him 
called by Sainte-Beuve "l'Homme sans Grace," 121 
while the self -study of this man without grace, has 
evoked much similar study from other graceless men. 
"C'est moy que je peinds," he writes, ". . . tout 
entier et tout nu . . . . Ainsi, lecteur, je suis moy- 
meme la matiere de mon livre." 

It has been suggested that Montaigne's sceptical 
attitude was due to his sympathy with the Pyrrhonis- 
tic philosophy. 122 Beading him to-day, it appears 
rather as an affair of temperament than of intellect, 
as an instinctive scepticism of the literary man, rather 
than as the reasoned scepticism of the doctrinaire. 
His avowals of orthodoxy are joined to the tran- 
quillity of a fundamental materialism. He seems to 
be asking, with Emerson, "So hot, my little sir?" 
His self -observation partakes of this character; it is 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 123 

formless and scattered, though Cardan himself could 
hardly be more minute. From literature he sought 
amusement, as well as from that science "qui traite 
de la connaissance de moy-meme." Like the Italian 
physician, he gives his likes and dislikes, his habits, 
his food and drink ; but his reason for so doing differs 
vastly. To Cardan, there seemed about his own per- 
sonality a something vital and significant which it 
behooved other men to know, while Montaigne appears 
to regard himself largely as a means of pleasant com- 
munication with other men of the same kind. He 
offers himself to the reader in a friendly fashion ; the 
result of his introspection brings no surprise nor 
shock, and his final estimate is, "pour moy doncques, 
j'aime la vie et la cultive." 

The absence of all serious fervor, of "la Grace," in 
Montaigne, strikes us sympathetically in our worldly 
moments; but it has had one ill effect. Using self- 
study, while yet, as it were, disregarding it, Montaigne 
could not fail to be imitated by the incoherent mind. 
There may be little excuse for egotism in any form, 
but there is none whatever for such loose and vague 
methods of self-observation. Thus, any mind which 
is naturally inclined to wander from the subject, 
hastens to take refuge in an imitation of the i { Essais. ' ' 
Contemporary literature acknowledges Montaigne as 
a type of introspection, but the direct effect of his 
influence is to deprive us of a great deal of valuable 
personal matter. 

Among the typical records of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the "Religio Medici" 12S must not be forgotten, 



124 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

for the quaint elevation of its style added much weight 
to the force of its opinions. It is meditative, but not 
detailed, self -study, with something of Montaigne's 
influence showing in the crabbed phrases. The author 
tells us that he read Cardan, and he shows the same 
feeling for the vastness of this great universe of which 
one reads in the life of the Italian physician. ' ' Every 
man is a Microcosm and carries the whole World about 
with him," he writes; also telling us, "the world that 
I regard is myself." Browne is as sceptical as Mon- 
taigne, but with this difference : he hesitates to believe 
because the question of religion interests him so much, 
rather than because it interests him so little. His 
looking-within is a looking upon still greater miracles. 
Browne's open mind and intellectual curiosity, his 
lack of prejudice and of superstition, place him among 
the forerunners of that later type of philosopher 
whose high seriousness constitutes, in itself, a reli- 
gion. 

The documents of an introspective kind are few 
during this period, and they are not to be found 
where one would expect to find them. For instance, 
the ponderous "Diary" of the scholar, Isaac Casau- 
bon, is detailed but non-introspective, concerning it- 
self little with the inner life of the writer. Our 
modern standards for this sort of record, both as to 
candour and fulness go back no further than to 
Rousseau. 124 His type of introspection is the type 
which has influenced the world to-day. His emotional 
power, his feeling for style and for nature, struck a 
chord so responsive in eighteenth-century minds, as to 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 125 

evoke a large group of similar confessions, frankly 
imitative in their nature. Rousseau's feeling that he 
was different from other men held also, as did Car- 
dan's, the belief that this difference was, in se, pro- 
found and important. In a manner somewhat cloudy, 
yet as a result of methodical observation, Rousseau 
comprehended that the forces which produced him 
were sociological and economical; while to himself he 
typified the great individual struggle with these 
forces. He knew that he was neurotic and saw what 
early conditions had caused the neurosis ; he knew that 
he was frail of physique, and yet industrious. He felt 
within himself the presence of a high creative imagina- 
tion, and he had faith in the power of its ideas. His 
faith was justified, for he beheld the nations shaken 
by the wind of his words, and he felt it necessary 
that men should know something of what he was and 
whence his spirit. 125 

It is much the fashion to decry Jean Jacques, to 
sneer at and to despise him, to shudder at his premises 
and to cavil at his conclusions. Morley, for instance, 
finds that "The exaltation of the opening page . . . 
is shocking. No monk or saint ever wrote anything 
more revolting in its barbarous self -feeling. ' ' 128 
There is a virtuous indignation expressed here which 
savors a thought too much of Mrs. Grundy to be 
convincing to the critical mind. For, if we look upon 
the " Confessions' ' from one point of view, we find 
ourselves infinitely in their debt. True, Cardan is the 
first to suggest that by the study of abnormal man, 
much might be learned about normal man. Cardan 



126 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

passed with the passing of the sixteenth century ; and 
suspected as he was, both of heresy and of madness, 
his work has been left locked within its Latin tomb. 127 

Rousseau attempted the same task in a living 
tongue. Through him, through his appeal, the ex- 
ceptional person, the atypical child, the individual 
with the intense sensibilities or emotions, have come 
to be more sympathetically understood. His looking- 
within, it is true, revealed much that was unbalanced 
and ugly, but it also revealed what was human nature, 
and common to all humanity. The part borne in his 
life by the pressure of monstrous social injustices is 
differentiated and made plain, and this constitutes no 
small part of our indebtedness. In fact, the rising 
humanitarianism of the present day has been in- 
fluenced greatly, if not wholly produced, by Rousseau. 
Modern child-study and child-training, the endeavor 
to help the atypical person generally, have been aided 
by his showing us himself. The facts are placed 
vividly before us, when he purges his soul in all sin- 
cerity. His introspections are properly balanced by 
the historical method and made constructive by the 
autobiographical intention. 128 

The imitators of Rousseau follow most often his 
attention to nature, and its reaction upon his own 
sensibilities. A number of dreamers, led by his ex- 
ample to note their dreams, follow his footsteps in a 
rapturous, feminized manner. Ecstatic over moun- 
tains and waterfalls, these dreamers lament and be- 
moan their misfortunes without displaying any of 
the robuster qualities of Rousseau's naked candour. 
Lavater, Richter, and Kotzebue in Germany; Ugo 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 127 

Foscolo and Giusti in Italy, are instances of this type. 

Closer to Rousseau's sense of style is that of De 
Senancour, of whose "Obermann" 129 George Sand 
has written an exquisite appreciation. The founda- 
tion of De Senancour 's book is fictitious; its descrip- 
tive passages resemble, and at moments equal, Rous- 
seau, and by its introspection it is the forerunner of 
Amiel. " Je m' interrogerai, ' ' writes Obermann, "je 
m' observerai, je sonderai ce cceur . . . je determin- 
erai ce que je suis." 130 The result in this instance 
upon the self-analyst is particularly destructive; his 
lack of mental vitality renders him incapable of ac- 
tion. Years slip by filled with a sense of infinite 
illusion; this feeling extends even to his nearest 
friends. Withal, he is unquiet and sad, yet, in the 
manner of the neurasthenic, even the sadness has but 
little meaning, while everything in life seems vague 
and trivial. The book's vogue was taken as an indi- 
cation of that mctiadie du siecle, which was echoed by 
Alfred de Musset, 131 Baudelaire, and the lesser 
Byronists. 

The twentieth-century mind looking back over the 
nineteenth, is at times inclined to wonder how much of 
the so-called Byronism was due to Byron. 132 The 
Byronic attitude is supposed to include all possible 
introspective egotism, yet Lord Morley is at hand to 
point out the fundamentally objective character of the 
poet and his activities. 133 Study of his journals and 
memoranda — which are all that remain of the de- 
stroyed memoir — display an introspection generally 
constructive and well balanced. Of his work, he 
writes that it will be "a kind of guide-post ... to 



128 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

prevent some of the lies which will be told and de- 
stroy some which have been told already." 134 No 
doubt his expressed wish that Lady Byron should be 
his reader, is responsible for his intention to be faith- 
ful and sincere. 135 

The "Detached Thoughts" display a remarkable 
keenness and justice in their self -observation. "My 
passions were developed very early," he writes, "per- 
haps this was one of the reasons which caused the an- 
ticipated melancholy of my thoughts. ' ' 136 The 
"Journal," however, is more melodramatic, more 
typically Byronic. One catches the morbid mood, 
one feels the scribbler at work. Nightmares are made 
much of; there are such phrases as "Ugh, how my 
blood chilled!" and the "Heighos" of the blood-and- 
thunder school. 

The contrast between Byron and Shelley in this 
regard is curious and illuminating. With all his 
melodrama, Byron's self -study makes an attempt at 
candour, fulness, and method. Shelley, on the con- 
trary (whose opinion of Rousseau's "Confessions" 
has not been forgotten), found the truth during all 
his life to be an unpleasant surprise, because things 
as they are were such an ugly contrast to things as 
Shelley thought they ought to be. His nature seemed 
incapable of self-understanding, just as we read in 
his letters that it was incapable also of understanding 
others. He was vividly mistaken in his estimates of 
the character of almost every one with whom he came 
into close contact, — Harriet and Eliza Westbrook, Miss 
Hitchener, Hogg, Claire Clairmont, Byron himself. 137 
To the end, he retains his "colossal power of self- 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 129 

deception, ' ' as Arnold calls it ; he remains the supreme 
example of a man untouched by the modern wave of 
subjective and introspective philosophy. 

"The subjective movement," says Caird, "indicates 
a relative advance in man's consciousness of him- 
self . . . for although the mind turned back upon 
itself may become troubled and unhealthy, yet its pain 
and disease are necessary steps in the way of a higher 
life." 138 

This relative advance Shelley never made; with 
the result that he caused quite as much suffering as 
though he had been an unthinking sensualist of the 
Cellini type. One cannot forget poor, silly, little 
Harriet writing, in a gust of admiration, how Mrs. 
Nugent was there, "talking with Percy about virtue !" 
And one notes how his total lack of self -study and 
self -understanding caused Shelley to dash himself to 
pieces against the disapproval of a world, not so much 
more moral as more subjective, and thus unable to 
see why Shelley could not see what Shelley really was. 
With what different and deepened feelings do we read 
the letters of that sheltered recluse and poet, Mrs. 
Browning, filled, as they are, with the most delicate 
and just self -observation ! "I have lived only in- 
wardly," she says, "or with sorrow for a strong emo- 
tion . . . my heart in books and in poetry . . . my 
experience in reveries. ' ' 139 

If this modern subjectivity be an advance in the 
gain of truth, we owe it to Rousseau. But the 
twentieth-century mind under modern science has car- 
ried the faculty of introspection far beyond that of 
the eighteenth, and into details which escaped Jean 



130 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Jacques. Moreover, the mutual interchange of lan- 
guages and literatures has developed a type of 
greater sensitiveness to all moods and to all shades of 
thought. 

The recently published notebooks of Emerson fore- 
shadow many of the newer preoccupations, by means 
of an intellect possessing the fresh classic quality, 
though in novel surroundings. His tendency toward 
philosophical mysticism has more importance for the 
reader when a perusal of these journals indicates its 
source. Over and over again the young Emerson 
makes note of the influence upon his mind of the Neo- 
Platonists, especially Proclus, by whom his thought 
and style were colored. Those passages entitled ''My- 
self," display some of the acuteness of the modern 
scientific self -study, if expressed in an outworn poeti- 
cal manner. 140 He records his exaltation under the 
stimulus of nature and literature, with the depression 
arising from his wavering health. Deep religious 
feeling pervades many of the entries. "I am to give 
my soul to God, and to withdraw from sin and the 
world/' 141 he wrote; and we know, kept that resolu- 
tion. 

An entry made on his nineteenth birthday forms 
a valuable aid to an understanding of the man. This 
youth writes of "a goading sense of emptiness and 
wasted capacity,' ' but grants himself "an intellectual 
stature above the common." Of his affections, he 
notes: "A blank, my lord. . . . Ungenerous, selfish, 
cautious and cold, ... I yet wish to be romantic. 
There is not one being to whom I am attached with 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 131 

warm and entire devotion. ' ' 142 No doubt such 
1 'frightful confessions' ' are exaggerated; yet they de- 
fine that lack of human warmth which underlay his 
whole philosophy. If he was not to remain the ' ' bar- 
ren and desolate soul" 143 he called himself; yet he 
knew his weakness. Later, he notes that he lacked 
strong reasoning power ; 144 in other respects his in- 
tellect seems to have made, in a single year, gigantic 
strides toward greatness. 

Modern self-study, however, is not typically seen 
in a mind like Emerson's, whose calibre and character 
are those of the past. The "Journal" of Henri- 
Charles Amiel, 145 to certain temperaments, has car- 
ried an infinitely greater aid and suggestiveness. 
Many see in him a true example of the highest in- 
trospection, for, while he paused to watch himself, 
he expressed what he saw in words of the most accu- 
rately delicate beauty. The effect of the book was im- 
mediate ; 146 there are those to whom it has seemed 
to voice the very rhythm of life. The style was so 
sensitive, so flexible, so full, that one read on in a sort 
of bewilderment, as a traveller might behold, on either 
side of his path, the strange charms of a new country. 

In her admirable "Introduction to the 'Journal," 
Mrs. Ward calls Amiel "the brother of Obermann," 
but to our minds there seems little real brotherhood 
between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. 
Amiel himself wrote that he resembled "that eternal 
self-chronicler, Maine de Biran," whose introspective 
experiments had so little success, at least on the posi- 
tive side. What Amiel did not take from French 



132 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

psychology, he drew from the German subjective phi- 
losophers, and the combination served to heighten far 
beyond the average his power of " looking within." 
While he is "the spectator of his life-drama, ' ' he, too, 
like Cardan, like Obermann, or any other neuras- 
thenic, brings with him, into the world-theatre, that 
strained sense of universal illusion. 

Nor did his tendency to constant personal analysis 
fail of destructive effect. Confidence he always 
lacked. ' ' That energetic subjectivity which has faith 
in itself," he observes, "is unknown to me." "I 
have never felt any inward assurance of genius . . . 
what dreams I have are all vague and indefinite." 
How different the note struck by that Italian doctor 
struggling against a host of difficulties unknown to 
modern lives! "I have lived to myself," cried Car- 
dan, "so far as has been permitted to me, and in 
the hope of the future I have despised the present." 147 

The self-distrust of Amiel was based on his self- 
knowledge. He was undecided and overscrupulous: 
discouragement and ennui early laid hold on him. 
Moreover, he was one of those unfortunate beings 
whom nature has so stinted of vitality that the mere 
demands of daily life draw too heavily upon them, and 
they shrink fearfully from the greater demands of 
emotion, or of ambition. To such an one, any creative 
work is undertaken at a heavy price. Thought alone, 
to Amiel, was immense and satisfying; practical life 
seemed but to terrify him. He was perpetually pre- 
paring for a work which he had never the energy to 
begin. "I play scales as it were," he writes; "I run 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 133 

up and down my instrument, I train my hand . . . 
but the work itself remains unachieved . . . and my 
energy is swallowed up in a kind of barren curiosity. ' ' 
Such a nature, like Balzac's artist, 148 has spent its 
force in experiment, and has none left for the ap- 
pointed task. Hence Amiel's languor and ennui, 
the sense of emptiness which caused him to lose him- 
self in the mists of philosophical speculation. * * What 
interested me most in myself," he notes, "has been 
the pleasure of having under my hand a person in 
whom, as an authentic specimen of human nature, 
I could follow ... all the metamorphoses, the se- 
cret thoughts, the heart-beats, the temptations of 
humanity." To himself, he is continually as "a win- 
dow open upon the mystery of the world." At mo- 
ments there flutters across his page one of those deli- 
cate moods, whose description defies our grosser analy- 
sis, but which Amiel beholds in all its tenuous irides- 
cence: "I can find no words for what I feel. My 
consciousness is withdrawn into myself. I hear my 
heart beating and my life passing. ' ' And again : * ' My 
sensible consciousness is concentrated upon this ideal 
standing-point . . . whence one hears the impetuous 
passage of time, rushing and foaming as it flows out 
into the changeless ocean of eternity. ' ' 

Amiel has served us here as an example of pure and 
heightened introspection, but his journal is also a 
record of his religious feeling. This feeling links him 
with the mystics of the past — notably Richard of St. 
Victor, with whom he has many points of likeness. 
His religion is of the metaphysical, mystical type, 



134 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

tinged by his German heritage, and is nowhere so in- 
tense, emotionally, as the introspection by which it 
was accompanied. 

Minor types of the modern developed self-observer 
are many, and fall under various classifications. 
Those who watch their own processes should be con- 
sidered at the moment rather than the scientific self- 
students who merely survey themselves as they would 
study a crystal of definite character and fixed shape. 
The great latter-day autobiographers, Harriet Mar- 
tineau, Mill, Spencer, and others, are among these 
last, and have furnished us with the best means of 
examining the modern scientific movement. Yet the 
smaller group of the purely introspective must not be 
overlooked. Their observations form at least a solid 
basis "in a world most of whose other facts have at 
some time tottered in the breath of philosophic 
doubt. ' ' 149 The reader is referred to such books as the 
" Journals' ' of Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin, to 
that of Marie Bashkirtsev, and to such collections of 
letters as Merimee's, Balzac's, and the Brownings, if 
he is interested in the further manifestations of this 
tendency. 

As we turn to review the names in this section, we 
feel the justice of that view by which the introspective 
nature has, since the day of Protagoras, been linked 
with morbid conditions. Certainly, Montaigne, Car- 
dan, Rousseau, De Senancour, Amiel, are not the types 
of health. Yet there are very striking exceptions to 
this rule. Take that extraordinary family of English 
Quakers, the Gurneys of Earlham, 150 and note how 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 135 

the connection between introspection and sickliness is 
contradicted by the facts of their lives. Both descrip- 
tions and portraits of the members of this family show 
them to have possessed an unusual degree of physical 
beauty and vigor, health and intelligence. The gal- 
lery of miniatures shows one lovely young face after 
another. Their family history radiates cheerfulness, 
activity, and high spirits. They went fox-hunting, 
a cluster of pretty girls, in "pink" coats, which at 
that time no tenet of the Society of Friends forbade 
them to wear. They were never idle, they were much 
outdoors; they danced and gave dinners and were as 
gay as their neighbors. With all this, the deepest, 
the most introspective and intense religious life 
formed the primary occupation of that family. Each 
member kept an introspective journal, and one of 
these (Eachers) runs to seventeen quarto volumes. 
As each grew to maturity, this religious sentiment 
shaped itself variously, retaining a uniform stand- 
ard of goodness and zeal. The unique condition ex- 
isted among them, in that their individual changes of 
creed caused no break in their family harmony. All 
show balance and self-control. Mrs. Fry records the 
death of her beloved sister, Priscilla Gurney, as "a 
sweet time," and her account reads with the calm 
solemnity of a church service. 

From childhood, the Gurneys were in the habit of 
noting every passing mood. Meditation and journaliz- 
ing were two family dogmas ; a part of each day was 
set aside, and absolute truthfulness was exacted, even 
although the elders did not demand to read the result. 
One is tempted to linger over the naivete and charm 



136 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of these entries. "I feel this evening," writes 
Richenda, * * in a most comfortable mind. ... I really 
felt true pleasure while I was eating an excellent apple 
pudding. ... I walked by myself about the fields, 
with the most melancholy, delightful feelings, re- 
flecting on a future state." "As I went down the 
dance yesterday," writes her sister Louisa, "I 
thought of Heaven and of God." One of the broth- 
ers, John James, enters in his diary a series of ques- 
tions for the purpose of systematic self-examination; 
while the elder sister Catherine, who left the So- 
ciety to join the English Church, analyzes at length 
the effect which Butler's "Analogy" had on her re- 
ligious views. This useful, happy, and amiable fam- 
ily serves to remind us that the introspective habit 
is by no means necessarily destructive. When the 
inner life of an individual is full of vitality, the in- 
trospection is often a natural means of preserving 
that vitality. As a group, the Friends have always 
possessed it; nor can it be shown to have interfered 
with their output of/practical achievement. Worldly 
interests rarely suffered at their hands ; and their tend- 
ency to self -observation was, in most cases, a construc- 
tive factor in their lives. 

There is another sense in which an introspective 
nature may be at its best during its introspections; 
since the light will be cast into any morbid shadows by 
any honest effort at self -understanding. The name of 
the late Oscar Wilde, during his lifetime and before 
the tragedy which closed it, was linked in men's mind 
with the world's poseurs. The cleverness of his work 
and its aesthetic finish hardly atoned for its insincerity, 



THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 137 

its perversity, and its exaggerated pose. Had death 
but overtaken him in time, he might easily have gone 
down into the ages along with George Brummell, or 
William Beckford, or the Count de St. Germain, — 
and little would have remained but a poem or two, a 
bon-mot, the tradition of a sunflower in a velvet coat. 
But life is a ruthless dramatist, who startles us without 
compunction. From this figure — cast into the torture- 
chamber of her grimmest forces, crime and shame and 
judgment, — there rises a poignant cry "out of the 
depths.'' Strange, that the most sincere piece of 
self -study of our day should have come from the least 
sincere writer, that this most religious of modern soul- 
studies should be the work of the most pagan of mod- 
ern souls ! 

The "De Profundis" was written in prison during 
the last years of the nineteenth century. Mention of 
it should fitly bring this long survey to a close. Its 
style is not always free from phrase and paradox, 
("I went down the primrose path to the sound of 
flutes" 151 ), and the author exaggerates his position 
in contemporary letters by comparing himself to 
Byron. But his work is much more than an exposi- 
tion of personal vanity ; and it is in no sense an apol- 
ogy. The absence of weak excuse helps to make it the 
most inspiring study of the effects of suffering upon 
character that we possess in English. "In the begin- 
ning God made a world for each separate man, and in 
that world, which is within us, we should seek to live. 
... I must say to myself that I ruined myself and 
that nobody great or small can be ruined except by 
his own hand. ' ' 152 These words express a truth which 



138 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

cannot be reached save through the bitterest experi- 
ences, while to have realized it is almost to have freed 
one's self from their worst bitterness. 

" There is only one thing left for me now, absolute 
humility. ' ' 15S This realization is the saving grace of 
the man who wrote ; nor is there anything in literature 
closer to truth than his own analysis of the reasons 
for his fall. He was, indeed, "that man, who, wishing 
to write about everything, must know everything," 15 * 
of Balzac. His belief in reconstruction through suf- 
fering is reiterated in a noble music of language; for 
he, who began life by turning his back on all sorrow, 
had now come to feel "that sorrow is the most sensi- 
tive of all created things." 155 "Nothing seems to 
me," he writes, "of the smallest value except what 
one gets out of one's self. ... I have got to make 
everything that has happened to me good for me. ' ' In 
the crucible of humility and suffering some of the 
shame has been purged away; the sketch ends in the 
renewal of hope, of life, of beauty, — if upon other 
terms. The mere composition has been an aid to the 
spirit of hope, "since it is by utterance that we live." 

A communication such as the "De Profundis" 
brings nearer the sense of human dependence. Each 
one of us is forced by inexorable law to pass on to the 
race the result of his experience. An identical im- 
pulse moved Augustin or Descartes, as it moved 
Abelard or Wilde. For many centuries, introspec- 
tion has been the instrument in the hand of this im- 
pulse; and as an instrument, it has not been found 
more imperfect than the other means through which 
humanity strives continually to attain the truth. 



IV 

THE DOCUMENTS 



I. Change of belief. 
II. Genius. 

III. Groups. 

IV. Methodists. 
V. Quakers. 

VI. Mormons. 
VII. Identity of emotion. 
VIII. Candour. 
IX. Scientific self -observation. 



IV 

THE DOCUMENTS 

As we approach the self-study more nearly, it be- 
comes evident that some adequate plan for its survey 
must be formulated. The documents themselves are 
various as the personalities responsible for them; 
while the matter they contain is so scattered and so 
heterogeneous, that the task of sifting it seems at first 
sight to be as hopeless as the task which Venus set 
before Psyche. 1 The temptation, to which many 
workers in this field have yielded, is to make use of 
separate records as instances, to cull here and there 
the striking example, omitting the commonplace; to 
select, in a word, only those cases which serve to 
support their special theory. Such method is quite 
impossible in the case of the present volume. If this 
is to be an inductive study from all the obtainable 
facts, then a classification under different heads is 
naturally the first step. Ere we set to work to make 
this classification, let us glance at the main charac- 
teristics of the records, in the light of those funda- 
mental causes which have just been discussed. 

That all religious self -studies have been produced 
by the confession-motive working along with the 
tendency toward introspection, would seem to have 
been the conclusion arrived at by an investigation 

141 



142 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

into these basic principles. The wish to "tell all 
about it" produces a necessary "looking- within" to 
see what there is to tell. Upon the web of a fabric 
whose warp and woof seem to be always woven from 
the same threads, there is a design wonderfully varied 
and complex, in colors often strange and new. Just 
as the Polynesian tapa, at the first glance, seems to 
show in its pattern a purely individual caprice, yet, 
when studied, its design will be found to contain ele- 
ments tribal, hereditary, even national, and individual 
only as they are combined — so it is with these narra- 
tives. Their individual qualities may readily be dif- 
ferentiated, they lie rather in arrangement than in 
motif. All come under the sway of the same social 
and psychological influences, such as group-contagion, 
imitation, social conditions, and changes in belief. In 
addition, there are always a few which are purely 
the outcome of the creative instinct, the result of 
genius. These form the main motifs in the design of 
the religious confession ; and one must examine them 
well if he would understand the often elaborate fig- 
ures of which they form an intricate and essential 
part. 

That human nature does not take an account of 
itself when in a state of repose and equipoise, appears 
obvious; change therefore is the first law of the re- 
ligious confession. Once his poise is disturbed the 
subject tends to ask himself : What ami? and whence 
these changes? 

The ardently pious mind, having passed through a 
crisis caused either by a shifting of his religious point 
of view 2 or by the actual birth of a feeling unknown 



THE DOCUMENTS 143 

before, 3 reaches a pause of comparative calm whence 
two impulses arise. If the condition be one of peace 
and joy, — which, temporarily, it is apt to be, — he is 
filled with a desire to communicate and to express 
his happiness. Using his own phrase, he longs "to 
bear testimony to the goodness of God"; and his con- 
fession thereupon becomes the Augustinian "Confes- 
sion of praise. ' ' 4 

More frequently it happens that the storm through 
which his soul has just passed has been severe enough 
to shake the very foundations of the mind with un- 
certainty and terror. To review it upon paper, to 
re-trace the circumstances of his conversion and thus 
reassure himself of its blessed existence, is a means of 
establishing that serenity, of which, even now, he is by 
no means certain. 5 If he has friends, family, follow- 
ers, he is eagerly desirous that they shall witness his 
conflict and appreciate the worth of his victory. 6 It 
is more than important to him that the world should 
know he is not now what he was before. 

Of inspiration, of genius, at this crisis, our mention 
may be but brief. Such cases, at best, are all too 
few. Nevertheless, it were well to repeat that the 
great religious leaders, by the very fact of their 
genius, must needs leave behind them some systematic 
personal data. As a matter of fact, most of them 
have done so; and such material has been left in 
various forms, in sermon 7 or parable, 8 diary 9 or reve- 
lation. 10 Since they have prevailed as leaders largely 
through the force of personality, to impress that 
personality as much as possible, becomes an inevi- 
table duty of their sacred mission. No religious 



144 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

leader has succeeded — nor could lie hope to succeed 
— without a plentiful use of the "I." His gen- 
ius must make its direct personal appeal. And in 
these later days this personal appeal must be printed 
if it would reach a wider audience, such as earlier 
gathered to hear him when he preached to them 
upon a mountain, 11 or under a sacred tree, 12 or in 
the market-place of a Grecian city. 13 He may leave 
this appeal only in his letters to intimate friends and 
disciples ; 14 or in a diary to which, under the seal 
of a cypher, he confided his combats and discourage- 
ments ; 15 yet often there will be present, even in these 
private forms, an autobiographical intention showing 
his instinctive desire that the record should survive 
him, that it should be read. 

But genius is genius, and for one Fox, for one Wes- 
ley, there are many Woolmans and Hansons. Of the 
asteroids which circle about genius as about a lumi- 
nary, some merely reflect his light, while others will be 
found to shed a paler light all their own. The forma- 
tion of groups in human society differs little from 
the group-habit of the cosmos. Laws governing this 
formation have received some attention in a former 
volume, 16 though in a wider and more general con- 
nection, and were therein shown to follow the princi- 
ples obtaining in the formation of all crowds. The 
confessant, as a matter of fact, is completely subject 
to what has been termed "the law of the mental unity 
of crowds"; 17 and is much affected by contagion. 

The particular groups through which we may study 
these typical conditions readily occur to the mind. 
Such are the Gottesfreunde, in fourteenth-century 



THE DOCUMENTS 145 

Germany; the English Quakers grouped around the 
leadership of George Fox; the English Methodists 
similarly grouped around John Wesley; the Scottish 
seventeenth-century Pietists; the French Port-Royal- 
ists; the American Mormons. The family likeness 
shown by the individual members of these clusters 
is sufficiently striking to demonstrate the closeness 
of the tie between them. Nor must one forget what 
Sainte-Beuve is at some pains to remind us; that 
until modern days the influence of Augustin was 
manifest not over one, but over all types of the crea- 
tive religious mind. 18 Augustin was in fact * ' a great 
empire divided among such distinguished heirs as 
Malebranche, Bossuet, and Fenelon." Already have 
we noticed in another section the breadth of that king- 
dom, which includes him who was named as the first 
of the moderns. 

A general study of religious movements will serve 
to confirm our impression of the part played therein 
by group-contagion. Inevitably one returns to the 
importance of the personal element; and to the need, 
felt by every religious leader, of making that element 
prevail. The means lay at hand ever since the print- 
ing-press stood ready to carry the Gospel among the 
Gentiles. Through this means, the freshness and 
force of the original emotion will have all the weight 
that the leader can give to it, will create new centres 
of that emotion and charge them with new energy. 

If this religious leader be a mystic of the ancient 
pattern, — a Teresa, or a Mme. Guyon — she is urged to 
expression through the influence of the confessional. 
If he be a reformer like Fox or Swedenborg, the motive 



146 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of self-preservation acts as a strong incentive ; for such 
a leader must leave an image of himself upon the 
printed page, so that his followers may be cheered 
when he has left them. If the conditions surround- 
ing him have been those of success, this motive may 
be weakened, the diary or the day-book may be briefer 
and more formal. This is to be seen in the case of 
the Wesleys, whose personal success was so overpow- 
ering. But such success is, after all, not common ; the 
religious reformer is apt to die while still uncertain 
as to the accomplishment of his mission. 

The exact relation of the confessant to his group 
is one not easy to determine ; since he is chary of ma- 
terial serviceable to that end. Individuality is ever 
jealous; and a confessant dislikes to admit his con- 
formity to any existing pattern. He is apt, on the 
other hand, to protest loudly his entire originality, and 
to cry that the extent of his candour in self -revelation 
has never been before attempted. 19 Style is at times 
the only link which appears to bind him to the other 
members of his group. Usually he will describe the 
social conditions surrounding himself and the circum- 
stances of his belief, thus displaying the strength of 
the religious influence to which he has been exposed. 
In the earlier confessions this may only be done in- 
directly; we may have lost much because of the si- 
lence of Augustin, concerning all these matters. 

The force of group-contagion is almost always un- 
derestimated. The great religious leader is far too 
often treated as an isolated phenomenon, when, as a 
matter of fact, he is almost never an isolated phe- 
nomenon. There seems to prevail the opinion that 



THE DOCUMENTS 147 

lie would become less important and less worthy if this 
truth were known. Actually, this is not the case. 
Joan of Arc 20 has not been rendered less extraordi- 
nary because she is now shown to have been but one 
of many seers of visions and hearers of voices, all eager 
to aid in quieting their distracted country. Is Christ 
less wonderful because of John the Baptist ? Eeligion, 
as one of the more communicable emotions, postulates 
the existence of a leader or leaders and a group of fol- 
lowers; some of whom may possess talent and force 
enough to become leaders in their turn, and to set up a 
further group-contagion. This is as true of later liter- 
ary groups, as of the earlier clusters who listened and 
followed the man himself. 

The main clusters of confessants are thickest dur- 
ing and after the upheavals of the Reformation. 
Those documents which exist earlier come from con- 
vents and monasteries, and their character is largely 
predetermined by their surroundings. Bearing all 
the marks of an early simplicity and credulity, they 
are of great value, for by means of these records may 
be studied the whole of mediaeval mysticism, and in 
particular that state known as sanctification, so vehe- 
mently discussed to-day. But as nuclei, as definite 
groups, these records cannot be considered with any 
justice, since the countries and the periods of time 
which they cover are too wide for satisfactory classi- 
fication. 

Let us rather direct our attention, for the moment, 
to the typical record-groups of the Protestant sects. 
The seventeenth and eighteenth century pietistic re- 
vivals furnish an abundance of material toward the 



148 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

study of these religious families; not the least impor- 
tant of which lies in their strong individuality and 
marked communal feeling. The English Quakers, the 
later English Methodists, possess striking group-char- 
acteristics, and are wholly accessible for the purpose 
of comparative study. An examination of them, as 
groups, will form a useful background to our further 
consideration of their individual examples. 

Although John Wesley left no autobiography and 
although his journal is by no means so introspective as 
many another, yet he understood in the fullest measure 
how important was this method of perpetuating a re- 
ligious movement. The lives led by most of his preach- 
ers were full of physical as well as spiritual adven- 
ture; and "Wesley, when editing the "Arminian Mag- 
azine,' ' appreciated to the full the value of all this 
material. We read that: "Mr. Wesley requested 
many of the itinerant preachers who were em- 
ployed under his sanction to give him in writing an 
account of their personal history, including a record of 
their conversion to God, of the circumstances under 
which they were led to minister the word of life, and 
of the principal events connected with their public 
labours. " 21 

Here it is evident that Wesley's keen perception as- 
sured him of the need to cultivate a group-sentiment 
around the Methodist revival; and our knowledge of 
his mind leads us to suppose that he was well ac- 
quainted with similar, earlier groups. Be that as it 
may, the result of his request was a collection of testi- 
monies which formed an admirable basis for any study 
of the tendencies of that period, and which, together 



THE DOCUMENTS 149 

with the Quaker group, forms a complete record of re- 
ligious history during two centuries. 

It will be observed that Wesley merely outlined the 
plan of these biographies, leaving the widest latitude to 
their writers. He seems to have had an unconscious 
reliance upon that impulse which we have named ' ' the 
autobiographical intention," and he does not appear 
to place the slightest faith in the method known later 
as the " questionnaire. ' ' And it is amazing how well 
he is justified in this opinion. The Methodist testi- 
monies, as a whole, are reliable, accurate, well-bal- 
anced, full of detail, yet marked with brevity, and 
pervaded with a feeling for essentials. Compared to 
the confusion, the vagueness, the lack of character in 
most " questionnaire " replies, these facts are very 
striking. They serve to show beyond possible con- 
tradiction that the spontaneous action of the mind 
upon any subject is an absolute prerequisite to gaining 
the truth; while forcing the mind and memory arbi- 
trarily in a given direction, as is done by a set of 
questions, inevitably causes the writer to omit, or to 
distort the emphasis, or to shift the facts. That vital 
element of the unexpected must perforce be lacking; 
while an over-zealous desire to furnish an interrogator 
with data will oftentimes cause the writer to manufac- 
ture it when it is not there. The questionnaire is 
intended to be a short-cut, and it has the disadvan- 
tages of most short-cuts; together with fundamental 
unfitness of its means to its material. Wise John 
Wesley, to ask of his ministers only "an account of 
their personal history with a record of their con- 
version to God ' ' ! 



150 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

By no stretch of imagination can Wesley be termed 
a mystic, yet it is strangely true that there are more 
mystics among his followers than among those of 
George Fox himself. This impression may be due to 
the fact that it is only the leaders of the Methodists 
— the active preachers of the sect — who have left their 
testimony ; whereas the feeling among the Friends was 
such that the humblest among them has left a record of 
God's dealings with him. 

More women write their experiences among the 
Friends than among the Methodists; yet, although 
the Wesleyan movement bears all tokens of its later 
development, there still remain striking likenesses be- 
tween the two groups. Both are part of that great 
revival springing from the people — a wave of emotion 
sweeping up from the hearts of the poor. 

Although we know that the Society of Friends has 
been in existence only since the lifetime of George 
Fox ; 22 yet every Philadelphian, at least, refers with 
assurance to the Quaker face, the Quaker character, 
and even to minor Quaker traits and idiosyncrasies. 
Many of these characteristics, of course, have nothing 
to do with the Society; but are merely indicative of 
that type of English person, and that section of Eng- 
lish country, from which its votaries were originally 
drawn. Yet many traits remain, which in a space 
of but two hundred years have stamped themselves 
upon human life in such a manner as to produce 
a recognizable type. Any one noting an example so 
pertinent of human malleability can no longer wonder 
at the effect which religious beliefs have produced in 
a comparatively short time upon communities, even 



THE DOCUMENTS 151 

upon nations. To such an one the cruelties of the 
Spanish during the time of the Inquisition, the in- 
sensibility of the modern Japanese to pain and death, 
present no longer any enigma. These are, indeed, 
but manifestations of the peculiar susceptibility of 
the human race as a whole, and of some nationalities 
in particular, to suggestion: and this suggestibility is 
thus seen as a great factor in our evolution. So great 
a factor, is it indeed, that the disappearance of a spe- 
cial suggestion (furnished in many cases by the tenets 
of religion) is followed by the disappearance of the 
special type, and the rapid subsidence of its particular 
idiosyncrasies, under the pressure of fresh suggestions. 
Rare to-day, and becoming rapidly rarer, is that con- 
trolled, serene personality which was produced and 
educated under the influence of the Society of Friends. 
The reader of their memoirs, testimonies, and convince- 
ments may, if he will, observe the type in the making. 
With very few exceptions, it is worth observing 
that the Society drew its membership in the be- 
ginning from persons who, since childhood, had 
been naturally serious and devout. The reader may 
be interested, if he will glance over their abstracts 
in sequence, to see how few are the conversions to Fox 's 
views, of nonreligious persons, or of those previously 
steeped in vice or in crime. Such a man as John 
Bunyan 23 was not drawn to them — in fact, he pro- 
claims their abominable errors. There are men among 
the Methodists who avow that they had little or no 
religious feeling; who, as soldiers or sailors, were dis- 
sipated or vicious, drunkards or seducers; such 
are seldom found among the Friends. 24 But the 



152 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

religious man who feels he is not religious enough; 
the good person tormented by a sense of indwelling 
sin; the pious nature dissatisfied with its present be- 
lief; — to these, the working mysticism offered by 
George Fox was a perfect solution of all their troubles. 
Their literal interpretation of the text, that he who 
humbleth himself shall be exalted, formed their guid- 
ing principle. The plain speech, the plain dress, were 
expressions of this idea of passing unnoticed by the 
world. 25 One man sees the vision of a lowly people ; 26 
another dreams concerning a persecuted people ; 27 
both join the Society. Conversions among Friends 
on the whole are less emotional and less violent. They 
have not to create a new sentiment for God, but only 
to change its form and give it freer rein. Hence 
the phrases, "under a concern," "weights and exer- 
cises fell upon me," "I was moved to go" here and 
there; phrases which rather under- than overcharge 
their emotional conditions. 28 

No doubt the persecution of the first Friends, their 
sufferings and imprisonments, ridicule by families 
and neighbors, had its effect in heightening their 
self-control and strengthening their philosophy. No 
doubt, living as they did close to the source of a vital 
emotion, they drank deep thereof and found it sus- 
taining and pure. Their records, as a whole, are on 
a remarkably high ethical level for persons so cir- 
cumstanced; their mysticism is under far more con- 
trol and is less fanatical than one would have sup- 
, posed. Much is due to the contagion of the Quaker 
meeting, where, by the very conditions of required 
passivity, there was induced in these groups a remark- 



THE DOCUMENTS 153 

able suggestibility. In meeting, fell those "weights 
and exercises"; in meeting, the inward voice speaks 
and the heart is tendered. Fox, himself, of course, 
was a case more definitely mystical ; and to his idea he 
joined a fierce vindictiveness which was the very re- 
verse of a meek and quiet spirit. 29 Any analysis of 
Fox would give all the particulars of his individuality 
in this respect; the reader need only compare him 
with other members of the Society. Such natures as 
Ellwood, Woolman, Howgill, Chalkley, or the entire 
family of the Gurneys of Earlham, appear much more 
typical of what we call to-day the Quaker spirit than 
does Fox. 

But these great qualities of early Quakerism held in 
them certain sources of weakness, which became ap- 
parent so soon as by a generation or so, its votaries 
were removed from the sources of their faith. In the 
first place, the tenets of their belief, if logically pur- 
sued, endangered self-preservation. Non-resistance 
tends to develop inertia; the practical condemnation 
of art gave an opportunity for the self-destructive 
tendencies of studied mental inferiority. There is no 
more striking proof that the vitality of a religious 
sentiment is highest at its source, that this vitality 
either does not persist, or becomes of little real worth 
where it does persist, than is shown by the later his- 
tory of the Society of Friends. 

When we come to consider Wesley and the eight- 
eenth-century Evangelical movement, other particu- 
lars are presented to our notice. The most prom- 
inent characteristic of the Quaker attitude toward 
God is love, the most prominent Methodist characteris- 



154 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

tic is fear. The children of Israel under the whip of 
Pharaoh's overseer present no more vivid picture of 
persecuted terror than do "Wesley's followers. The 
only questions which seem vital to them are those con- 
cerning Hell and Damnation; there is present in 
their narratives a perpetual undercurrent of gloomy 
excitement. In fact, a large number of these cases 
write of their condition before their conversion in 
terms suggesting insanity. ' ' I was as one distracted, ' ' 
says John Haime. "I fell on the ground groaning 
and pulling the hairs off of my head," cries Thomas 
Walsh. "The sweat poured from off me," write 
Whitefield and John Nelson. "I seemed to be hang- 
ing over the brink of hell," and so on. 30 Visions of 
Christ on the cross 31 or bathed in blood, 32 of a dazzling 
light, 33 of a strange animal 34 or a strange bird, 35 with 
voices whispering of evil 36 or of aid, meet us on every 
page. The relapses and reactions are uniformly vio- 
lent ; the arc of the pendulum is wide and its swing is 
extreme. Whitefield, in this regard, is really more 
typical than either of the Wesleys ; for the latter were 
by temperament much less emotional than most of 
their disciples. Like many great actors, theirs was 
the gift of producing a higher degree of excitement 
than they were feeling. Whitefield, 37 a dissipated 
youth, "froward," as he declares, "from my mother's 
womb"; loving cards, "affecting to look rakish"; 
then suddenly overwhelmed with the inward dark- 
ness of terror, the sweat pouring from him in his 
agony of prayer, is more typical of Methodism, than 
the scholarly John Wesley or the gentle Charles. 36 
The cultivated youth, the intellectual attitude of the 



THE DOCUMENTS 155 

great leader of Methodism, remove him, as a person- 
ality, very far from such as Whitefield, or Jaco, 39 or 
Joyce. 40 Even in the darkest time preceding his 
change of belief, Wesley cannot find that he has been 
very sinful; only that he has been unable to reduce 
himself to a wholly passive state of obedience to God. 41 
By nature he was spiritual in his outlook ; if he grows 
fearful, it is because, like Suso, 42 he works himself de- 
liberately into a state of depression and alarm. And 
when at last he found himself ; when he assumed that 
task the magnitude of which one cannot overestimate ; 
when, physically frail and always ailing, he travelled, 
preaching and evangelizing throughout the length and 
breadth of England without rest or pause; then he 
obtained a complete and an enduring peace, quieted 
and calmed by finding a suitable outlet to his genius. 
The fire which burned in his frail body lit a thou- 
sand other fires, as is the way with genius. More than 
any other modern man, he moved and vitalized the 
crowd who listened, and sent them home to new suf- 
ferings, to unimagined terrors. In their narratives 
they tell us of poignant repentance, of groans 
and sleeplessness, fevers and sweats, the howls of fear, 
the collapse from exhaustion. Man after man, stand- 
ing in those immense crowds, listens and is touched; 
we who read, may almost see that great wave of emo- 
tion sweep over and carry on with it, these helpless 
human atoms. 

The wave of Methodism did not spend itself in 
Great Britain, but travelled across the ocean to the 
United States. Here it found conditions especially 
favorable to the spread of such emotion. A people, 



156 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

who had succeeded at immense cost in achieving inde- 
pendence, during these first years seemed to have 
achieved thereby only a fresh isolation. Exhausted by 
a war which had been an additional strain on those 
pioneers whose very existence was perpetual war, 
many families ceased to look hopefully upon the fu- 
ture, and relapsed into a sort of listless terror. 
Near the growing cities, a fresh and animating cur- 
rent of vitality stimulated men to the building of 
the new Eepublic; but only those who are familiar 
with the personal writings of pioneer families can 
appreciate how little this new hope held for their 
solitary lives. The situation was as favorable as that 
in the Middle Ages for the revival or recrudescence 
of emotional religious experience. The heredity of the 
pioneers, their surroundings, their traditions, all pre- 
disposed them to a passionate interest in the subject of 
religion. There will be later occasion to quote in detail 
from Jonathan Edwards ' " Narrative of the Great 
Revival in New England," 43 which was the most pow- 
erful manifestation of this movement. All sects re- 
ceived an immense impulse, new communities were 
constantly being formed ; and new revelations received 
in the wilderness. 

The Mormon movement (which we cannot omit to 
note as a minor group) was an offshoot of the Great 
Revival. The family of Joseph Smith, senior, after 
wandering through Vermont, settled in Ontario 
County, near Niagara. 44 This district was still close 
enough to the remnants of the Iroquois tribes for 
dread of them to be an important psychological factor 
in the life of the Smiths. The whole frontier had, in 



THE DOCUMENTS 157 

truth, been ravaged by the Indians but two years pre- 
viously. In addition to the hardships of the 
frontier life, the severe winters, the scanty food, 
and the incessant labor, there was this active, un- 
remitting, vigilant terror of the Indians. Nor were 
the Smiths alone under the obsession of this dread, 
which entered into and became a part of their reli- 
gious fears ; it is noted in many another record. The 
Iroquois, painted, bestial, incredibly cruel, incredibly 
cunning, is a figure which comes nearer to a realization 
of the devil than any other on earth; just as the ex- 
perience of his captives must have come near to the 
realization of hell. This fear of hell and the Indian, 
this linking of these two ideas, beset the imagina- 
tions of the pioneer children, stamping them with an 
ineffaceable impression. The same combination made 
the Salem witch-trials yet more hideous; and it ac- 
counts for much beside Joseph Smith's vivid picture 
of the "Lamanites as the Devil's children." 

Historians of Mormonism emphasize the multiplica- 
tion of sects, the general religious ferment, which sur- 
round the youth of the founder. 45 Smith himself 
calls the place he lived in, ''the burnt-over district." 
It had been shaken by Methodist, Baptist, and Pres- 
byterian agitation; the Kestorationists, the Pilgrims, 
the Shakers, had wandered through it to disappear in 
the West. 46 The "revival-meeting" (that uncon- 
sciously accurate phrase!) had come into fashion, con- 
fusing and bewildering simple-minded and pious 
youth. 47 For Joseph Smith to receive a revelation, 
and to found a new sect, was therefore entirely in 
order with surrounding circumstances. Our mention 



158 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of his personality and psychology in their proper place 
will show that these were likewise entirely in accord. 
He was at first, he says, drawn to Methodism; then 
swerved toward the Presbyterians ; and his first vision 
came as an answer to this uncertainty. 

Mormonism serves a definite purpose, and must 
not be omitted from a survey of the group, be- 
cause of its nearness to our own time; but that 
very nearness has deprived it of certain typical 
features. The calibre of the Prophet's mind, the 
style of his revelations, show a marked deteriora- 
tion in the quality of this particular revival. 
Smith's biographer comments that "Joseph's first 
prophecy, at the age of eighteen, concerned Deacon 
Jessup and the widow's cow"; 48 and there were reve- 
lations concerning farms, and boarding-houses, Emma 
Smith and so forth. There is even sheer nonsense ; — 
''And they had horses and asses, and there were 
elephants, and cureloms and cumoms/' 49 which last 
beasts, Mr. Eiley scruples not to class with the Jabber- 
wock. But because we observe in this outbreak signs 
of distinct degeneration, vulgarity, charlatanry, and 
cheapness, — almost beyond any point yet reached by 
human delusion, — we must not, therefore, consider it 
as something entirely different. It is hard for our 
minds not to reject with disgust any possibility which 
would link "peep-stone Smith," and his revelations 
concerning boarding-houses, with the elegant mind of 
a Wesley, or the splendid fire and penetration of a 
Luther, or a Fox. Yet, if we look more closely, we 
see that this is wrong. The wave is moving through 
particles of muddy water, but it is the same wave. 



THE DOCUMENTS 159 

The intensity of these narratives, the movement of 
these communities under the influence of emotion, are 
sufficient to bear witness to their real, if often piteous, 
sincerity. By contrast, the concerns and exercises of 
the Friends seem certainly less heightened. Yet no 
Mormon, and few Methodist confessions have the 
literary accent which one may enjoy in the first 
Quakers, nor: have they that intense, poetic phrase- 
ology. 

All these groups regarded death in the light of a 
spiritual drama, during which the chief actor must 
undergo every possible emotional influence in order 
to make his ending the culmination of all previous 
religious excitements. James Lackington, during a 
mood of reaction, writes of his wife, that "she died in 
a fit of enthusiastic rant, surrounded by several 
Methodistical preachers. ' ' 50 To Mrs. Fry, her sis- 
ter 's demise was "a sweet time." 51 Here are op- 
posite points of view which yet indicate like 
conditions. It will not be forgotten how, at his 
mother's passing, Augustin checked all noisy grief. 
He writes, "My own childish feeling, which was 
through the youthful voice of my heart finding 
escape in tears, was restrained and silenced. . . . 
For we did not consider it fitting to celebrate that 
funeral with tearful plaints and groanings." His 
friend Evodius taking up the psalter, the mourners 
thereupon joined in the psalm. 52 Modern pietist sects 
echo the ideas and practice of the primitive Church be- 
fore the dogmatic ritual had chastened and controlled 
them. 

The student, considering the appended data, will 



160 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

no doubt observe that in their composition the Quaker 
and Methodist records testify not to fortuitous circum- 
stance, nor to individual caprice, but to the operation 
of a general human law. According to such law, all 
emotions — and especially those which are novel to the 
subject — tend to express themselves and be communi- 
cated in writing or speech. The persistence of reli- 
gious movements is dependent upon this law; since 
but for the relief afforded by self -study and confes- 
sion, the original impetus given to the movement by 
emotion must soon have died away. These rows of 
dun-colored volumes, therefore, shed much light upon 
certain complex and obscure processes of the modern 
man; so that what before seemed futile as the dust 
becomes charged with vital significance. Many of us 
have looked upon the Sunday School autobiography 
(as we may call it) with wonder that it should exist, or 
that, existing, it should differ so little from its fellows. 
Few realize that it is this very spontaneous similarity 
which makes it so valuable. A conchologist may make 
little out of a single shell, but bring him fifty, and he 
will describe and classify the species. These memoirs 
share in common characteristics that enable the stu- 
dent to determine the extent, depth, and quality of 
the feeling which inspired them; together with their 
difference from similar manifestations, their varia- 
tion from other groups. 

Reading these documents, the student gains a con- 
viction of the identity of religious emotion under all 
circumstances, at all times, in all nations and natures. 
Each protest of originality, each effort of the subject 
to be himself, forms another link in the human chain. 



THE DOCUMENTS 161 

Each convert, in turn, cries with Rousseau, ' ' au moins, 
Je suis autre. ' ' Each convert is by that very protest 
linked to every other convert; while the very repeti- 
tion is warrant of the identity of the impulse. The 
first effect of these bubbles of individuality, rising and 
subsiding again into the whirlpool of life, is to impress 
one with the uniformity of their cause. 

The confessant, telling of his life and his sins, seek- 
ing to kindle others with the fire in his own soul, is 
making a passionate effort for individualism. He 
does not realize that when you read him with eighty or 
more fellow-Methodists or Quakers, his individuality 
disappears almost as completely as though he were a 
Hebrew chronicler in the earliest days. His actual 
religious idea — no matter how great — will never be 
found to stand quite alone. Thus Jesus, Buddha, 
Mahomet, Augustin, Calvin, Luther, touch hands 
across the globe and across the ages. Each has dipped 
his cup in the same spring. 

The common identity of the essential human emo- 
tions has never been established more forcibly than by 
a study of the religious confession. We think always, 
as did Sir Thomas Browne, that " 'tis opportune to 
look back upon old times and contemplate our fore- 
fathers. Great examples grow thin and to be fetched 
from the passed world. ' ' 53 Yet these sentences were 
written in the seventeenth century; and before some 
of the greatest examples in literature, at least, were 
born. 

The lesser religious cases are linked with the greater, 
and the slow processes of evolution cause but slight 
changes over the centuries. Lay Augustin side by 



162 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

side with Hurrell Froude, or Amiel, and we shall note 
the difference. The quality of religious feeling is 
higher and more beautiful and more intense in the 
Bishop of Hippo. Apart from genius this is natural; 
he is closer to the source of his emotion. The intro- 
spection is more developed in the two moderns; in 
whom it has become a conscious, no longer an uncon- 
scious factor. It affects their composition and it is 
systematized by them in a way unknown to Augustin. 
These three minds differ widely in idea, in force, and 
in intellectual quality; yet all three are recognizably 
permeated by the same emotion. 

There are qualities in the religious confession, how- 
ever, which do not remain stable; which shift with 
every age ; and whose presence or absence affects very 
greatly the total impression made by the confessant. 
The most important of these is candour. Now, stand- 
ards of candour have changed very much, and de- 
veloped in accordance with the development of 
men's powers of introspection. The deeper a self- 
observer looks within, the more he tries to see, the 
vaster appears to him that cloudy country of self. 
He is like the traveller on foot, to whom at every mile 
the land of his pilgrimage seems to increase in ex- 
tent. According to the ideas of his age, Augustin is 
uncommonly candid, but to our minds his candour 
is perforce incomplete. It was impossible for Augus- 
tin, like Amiel, "to hear his heart beating and his life 
passing. ' ' 54 One of the chief reasons for this is that 
he was the possessor to a high degree of what Amiel 
had not, namely, "that energetic subjectivity which 
has faith in itself.' ' Genius though he was, his intro- 



THE DOCUMENTS 163 

spective powers were rudimentary in certain respects-, 
compared to what such powers have since become. He 
told truly what he knew, and what he knew is just as 
important now as when he told it. Since Augustin, 
we have been led to know more and more ; until we 
know now much that he never dreamed of; and our 
candour is greater in proportion. 

At all times, candour is a variable and an uncertain 
quality in the confessant. Its limitations are also the 
limitations of temperament; and in this regard, the 
difference among writers is amazing. Intelligences 
accustomed to a developed introspection find no diffi- 
culty in describing what other minds could not even 
think. What A will regard as a simple statement of 
fact, may appear to B as an arduous piece of self- 
revelation. An enquiry considered by C as scientific 
and legitimate, and by him satisfied with the minute- 
ness of a medical report, will seem to D an outrageous 
public glance into the private chambers of life. New- 
man begins the " Apologia " with an accent of solem- 
nity, as if about to wrest from his soul a sacredly in- 
timate revelation. What he tells us, after this pre- 
amble, is his change of creed, his views about guardian- 
angels, the Tractarians and the Monophysites. Ob- 
viously, such matters are sacredly intimate to him. 
His real springs of thought and action are studiously 
concealed ; and thus his candour is seen to be as slight 
as his introspective power. The reader feels that 
Newman would have found it impossible even to un- 
derstand such a sentence as Augustin wrote about giv- 
ing up his mistress, 55 for he had no such gift of accu- 
rate self -observation. "I never work better," ob- 



164; RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

serves the candid Martin Luther, "than when I am 
inspired by anger ... for then my whole tempera- 
ment is quickened, my understanding sharpened. ' ' 56 
The ability to make such self -study as this is rare; 
and it is of particular value to the confessant. 
Cardan, Rousseau, Alline, and even George Muller, 
and John Trevor, gain in use and dignity, easing their 
souls by the acknowledgment of vices and habits which 
with many persons never even take on the crystalliza- 
tion of words. Their candour is a part of the special 
discipline of truth. 

De Quincey has remarked that some persons have it 
not in their power to be confidential; they are really 
incapable of piercing the haze which envelops their 
secret springs of action. 57 Naturally, therefore, their 
lack of introspection limits the extent of their candour. 
If a man has the ability to look deep within him- 
self, then merely to speak of that which lies near 
to the surface, cannot seem unduly frank; whereas, 
if he lack this ability, then to lay bare any fact lying 
beneath the topmost layer of convention, must seem 
unduly frank. The degree of unreserve in a self- 
portrayal becomes a question of individual tempera- 
ment, and the revelations resulting from this unre- 
serve, should in truth be so regarded whenever they 
are brought into contact with prevalent standards of 
taste. Such standards alter from age to age, if not 
from generation to generation; and yet it is by them 
the confessant is apt to be held to a final judgment. 
Moreover, standards of taste often prevail in unex- 
pected directions, guiding the confessant himself. 
What else makes the "Spiritual Diary" of Sweden- 



THE DOCUMENTS 165 

borg so vile, and the "De Profundis" of Wilde so 
beautiful 1 Each is perfectly candid ; and the matter 
confessed in both is piteous and horrible. But the 
emphasis, the balance, the standard of taste, is pre- 
served in one and not in the other ; so that the reader 
may read one with tears in his eyes, and the other 
with a sense of nausea. 

Balance in candour is less apt to be maintained in 
the religious than in the secular confession. Humil- 
ity being to the confessant his first need, he is un- 
questionably apt to dwell upon his pre-converted state 
of sin. He will thus often be candid only about the 
period before conversion. George Miiller's early im- 
moralities are peculiarly shocking ; 58 his candour 
about them is disagreeably complete; but once con- 
verted, we hear nothing more from him of a personal 
kind. Biographers of Alexander Pope have found 
him insincere, 59 but what a beautiful example of well- 
balanced candour he gave us, when he declared: "I 
writ because it amused me; I corrected because it 
was as pleasant to me to correct as to write. ' ' In fine, 
the intellectual or scientific impulse to candour is even 
greater than the religious or emotional. The intellec- 
tual reverence for the fact is as intense as the religious 
reverence for the idea. Therefore to many minds, 
the great self -studies, the work of Herbert Spencer, of 
Cardan, Cellini, Rousseau, and Mill, contain quali- 
ties seriously appealing as the work of Augustin, 
or Teresa, or George Fox. These readers will be, jn 
general, thoughtful and unemotional minds, those to 
whom the service of the truth means in itself the 
service of God. Reading Augustin may lead one to 



166 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

prayer and praise; reading Rousseau leads one to 
think and tremble. Seriousness and sincerity are 
often in themselves religious qualities, and the reader 
is awed in the presence of a really elevated candour, 
no matter what the cause. 

For these, if for no other reasons, an especial in- 
terest is attached to those records of self-experiment 
written in a particular style and for a particular pur- 
pose. Space forbids that all of these should be listed 
here, while a lack of human interest in most of them 
renders it unnecessary. But there are some instances 
which may not be omitted, of men who minutely note 
the result in themselves of an illness, or of a cure, or 
of a condition, or of a scientific experiment. De Quin- 
cey is a case in point. 60 Insanity is noted with care 
by B. R. Haydon 61 and Clifford W. Beers. 62 Andre 
de Lordes, 63 the author of "Theatre d 'Epouvante, " 
gives a careful analysis of his early preoccupation with 
the emotion of fear. 64 Neurasthenia has lately formed 
the subject for similar self -studies, all more or less 
unsuccessful. The idea of scientific self-observation 
goes well back into the eighteenth century. Hibbert 
carefully notes the narrative of Nicolai, 65 a bookseller 
of Berlin, who, during an attack of bilious fever, no- 
ticed that his dreams grew so vivid as to partake of the 
nature of visions. Further illness and anxiety turned 
them into visions altogether, which were systematically 
studied by himself and his doctor until he was cured. 
Nicolai, though very much frightened at times, is on 
the whole wonderfully calm. "Had I not been able 
.to distinguish phantasms," he writes, "I must have 
been insane . . . but I considered them what they 



THE DOCUMENTS 167 

were, namely, the effects of disease and so made them 
subservient to my observations. ' ' This is a remark- 
ably strong-minded person, and one wonders what the 
end of his life brought forth. Nicolai had an imita- 
tor in a man who, upon an attack of inflammatory 
fever, accurately transcribed his hallucinations, which 
were supernatural in character. 86 

The famous Dr. Pordage, 67 rector of Bradfield, 
Berks, on the contrary, had a very mystical and in- 
genious theory to explain the visions which worried 
him in the night. He believed that the "Gyant with 
a great sword in his hand, ' ' and the dragon with fiery 
eyes, were especial evidences of God's interest and 
favor. They might, he thought, "have caused a great 
distemper," had not angels in person come to his 
rescue. The doctor's explanation seems to us to-day 
quite as fantastic as his apparitions. Cardan (to 
whom one must needs return for all these matters) 
had a plentiful experience of visual and auditory 
phenomena; and many theories for their explana- 
tion. 68 In his turn he is cited by the learned Dr. 
John Beaumont, 69 who himself underwent the most 
remarkable attention from spirits of all sorts. 70 Their 
first visitation followed hard upon an illness; the 
second was some years later. There were visions and 
little bells ringing in his ear, which he seems to have 
taken calmly and describes carefully. Many scattered 
instances of this kind occur in the literature of auto- 
biography. 71 

The self-experimentalists form another group in this 
particular connection. Charles Babbage, 72 the mathe- 
matician, roasted himself in an oven. Various per- 



168 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

sons note the effects of ether or chloroform. 73 "Tre- 
lat cites the author St. Edme, who put himself to 
death and who minutely observed the last impressions 
of his last night." 74 There is extant a like narra- 
tive from a Corsican named Luc-Antonio Viterbi. 75 
No less a person than Sir Humphry Davy 76 wrote a 
monograph "on the effects of nitrous-oxide gas" tried 
upon his own person. The result was of some value in 
showing how his spirits were thereby heightened, and 
how images arose and turned into delusions. 

The reader will not have failed to remark the seri- 
ousness with which these experiments are undertaken. 
It is, indeed, their only excuse. ' ' Agir et ecrire comme 
en la presence perpetuelle d'un spectateur indifferent 
et railleur," as Taine wrote of Merimee, "etre soi- 
meme ce spectateur"; 77 — this defines the danger in 
self -observation. This attitude is the sterile Byron- 
ism, the "maladie personnelle, " which has been named 
as "the great plague of our spiritual life." 78 

Undertaken from this cynical point of view, self- 
study becomes worse than useless; and is open to all 
the objections which have been urged against it. The 
service of Truth, whether one be enrolled under the 
banner of science or of religion, is the most important 
task known to man. The mere cynical self -analyzer 
is rarer than many critics would have us believe. He 
may, in fact, be left wholly aside, as we proceed in 
our attempt to examine and to classify that material 
which the sincere servants of truth and confessants 
of religious experience place at our disposal. 



V 

THE DATA ANALYZED: I 



\ 



I. Parentage: Heredity: Education. 
II. Health — poor. 

III. Health— good. 

IV. Pathological records. 
V. Criminal records. 

VI. Witchcraft records — possession by devils. 
VII. Contagion. 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 

From the moment that a study of groups has es- 
tablished the common identity of their emotional re- 
ligious experiences, much is felt to have been gained. 
The student is thereby enabled to move upon broader 
lines, and to consider the various aspects of the sub- 
ject as though they belonged to something homo- 
geneous. No longer is it needful to differentiate 
between the feelings of the Methodist, the Catholic, 
or the Friend. Each believes that he upholds, as a 
torch, the flame of Truth; yet to us, on beholding 
them all from the same distance, one star differs 
little from another star in glory. 

There is another point of view, from which the data 
appear as more significant than had at first been 
anticipated. No one studying the appended cases can 
fail to note that they mark the difference between the 
emotional process involving revelation and faith, and 
the intellectual process involving the formulation of 
a dogmatic belief. Whereas the first experience is 
fundamental and universal, the second has ever been 
to a large degree factitious and circumstantial. That 
feeling which leads a man to seek for a fresh religious 
inspiration, does not of necessity entirely govern the 
shape which his belief will eventually take. Many 

171 



172 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

influences combine to determine his choice of a sect, 
or of a dogma, which influences have had absolutely 
no part in the great initial impulse of his religious 
need. 

Scientists have, of course, commented long ere now 
upon this fact, according to their several investiga- 
tions. Delacroix has pertinently noted the identity of 

* the formulae of mysticism, an identity persisting, what- 
ever the variation in the creed of the mystic. "Les 
mystiques/ ' he wrote, "separes par le temps, l'espace, 
le milieu historique, forment un groupe, et leur ex- 
perience se rattache a un meme type psychologique. ' ' * 

But the facts go beyond mysticism ; they include all 
religious experience. The form which emotional ex- 
perience takes in the human soul, the process which it 
must follow, are governed by basic laws of heredity, 
physique, and temperament. The form which intellec- 
tual belief takes in the human mind, is governed by 
much narrower social and artificial conditions. The 
age a man dwells in, the society wherein he plays his 
part, affect the latter process; often he elects to 
join some congenial group less because of religious 
interests than because of social interests. The ques- 
tion of affiliation with a special group or sect may be 
due to environment or to a reaction from environ- 
ment. 2 There is a very wide diversity in the articles 
of faith subscribed to, let us say, by the Gottesf reund, 
the Scots Presbyterian, and the Quaker; yet who 
will deny the identity of the feeling in the soul of 

• Suso and Luther, Haliburton and George Fox? It is 
not even necessary to confine the comparison to the 
sects of Christianity alone. From Al-Ghazzali the 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 



173 



Arabian, to Uriel d'Acosta the Portuguese r Jew, the 
same process is at work, identical in manifestation, 
identical in progressive symptoms. 

Differences in creed dwindle to a very unimportant 
place in the scheme of any investigation. The subject 
may be a Mormon, a Christian Scientist, or a Buddhist ; 
either because his parents were, or because they were 
not. Once the heat of emotion is passed, social pres- 
sure aids in the crystallization of an evolved belief. 
The man has undergone certain feelings, and from 
them has drawn certain inductions leading in the di- 
rection of certain opinions. Human-like, he seeks to 
ally these opinions with other similar views, both to 
strengthen them and to make them prevail. What 
he does not usually recognize, but what we at this dis- 
tance recognize for him, is that the emotions which 
gave birth to his opinions are not peculiar to him- 
self, nor to his sect, nor to his nation, nor to his race. 

The subject, in fact, frequently confuses the effect 
with the cause. Just as the lover thinks that it is be- 
cause his beloved outvies all other women, that he 
loves as no man ever loved, so the religious conf essant 
thinks that it is the importance of what he thinks and 
believes that causes him to suffer so intensely or to 
rejoice so exceedingly. The fact is he would suffer 
and rejoice to the same degree, no matter in what port 
his troubled mind finally decided to drop anchor. 
The emotion is human, basic, and universal; the par- 
ticular dogma is rather its result than its cause. 

If there is one good office which the reading of all 
these lives may do, it is to eliminate the idea that any 
one creed has a right to hold itself as more religious 



174 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

than any other creed. It is not religious feeling 
which guides a man in the choice of a Church ; rather 
is it his intellectual conception of the relation to con- 
duct of the emotion he is undergoing or has just un- 
dergone. This is proven by the fact that not one 
case of religious inspiration can be found in one sect 
which has not its exact parallel in another sect. The 
matter of all men's views is as diverse and fluctuating 
as the matter of their feelings is constant and stable, 
therefore it is with this stable matter of feeling that 
we have chiefly to do. 

The data provided in these cases are to be con- 
sidered as uniform, and to be classified according to 
human nature and to psychology. They may be 
roughly divided under two main heads, the personal 
and the purely religious. The latter is apt to be fur- 
nished us in a confusing fulness, so that it is often 
hard to sift the trivial from the important features of 
the case. The former, on the contrary, is frequently 
scanty and is sometimes omitted entirely. The reason 
for this will be readily understood. 

Even so late as the eighteenth century the pious 
and uplifted person regarded his own piety and ex- 
altation as a something wholly "not himself,' ' hav- 
ing no relation to his daily life and habits, or 
to hygiene, or social conditions, or to heredity or 
health. Indeed, when we realize how completely this 
was true, and frequently is still true, we marvel that 
the confessant gives us even so much information. 
An historian of the modern scientific spirit, to-day be- 
come as dominant a quality as ever was the credulity 
of the Middle Ages, will no doubt observe its en- 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 175 

trance into the religious narrative, in the modern - 
tendency to insert therein any material elucidating the 
personality or the situation of the author. Unconscious 
of its value, unaware, as it would seem, that accuracy 
of detail had any bearing on his particular religious 
problem, the confessant, about the middle of the six- 
teenth century, began to systematize his record — to 
abandon his mediaeval vagueness — and to open the 
work with an account of his parents and his infancy, * 
his health and his education — furnishing us, in a word, 
with the data of his case. Should any one desire con- 
crete illustrations of the change in manner, let him 
compare the writings of Thomas a Kempis, 3 the abbot 
Herman, 4 Juliana of Norwich, Angela da Foligno, 
Gertrude of Eisleben, Mechtilde, and so on, with 
similar confessions by Carlo da Sezze, Teresa, Jeanne 
de la Mothe-Guyon, or the memoiristes of Port-Royal. 
The difference is not merely literary, — for the earlier 
records are extremely diffuse, — but lies in a new per- 
ception of the value of all the facts when presenting 
a case. 

Single writers, scattered through the Middle Ages, 
are not lacking in this perception, which indicates 
their distinction of mind. Augustin had it as a part 
of his genius. It will be found in the abbot Guibert 
de Nogent, slightly in Abelard, and strongly in that 
remarkable woman Hildegarde of Bingen, 5 whose can- 
dour received as much contemptuous misunderstanding 
as ever that of Cardan or Rousseau. Her scientific 
tendency is explained by her genuinely scientific mind, 
for she was a distinguished botanist and physician. 
When we read to-day her conscientious endeavor to 



176 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

present and to understand her own case, we are in- 
clined to agree with Michelet that she showed "the last 
gleam of good sense" 6 in her age, and not with the 
later critic who dismisses her as *■ ' a mad old woman. ' ' 7 
Since nothing during the Middle Ages so quickly 
brought upon one the stigma of insanity, as scientific 
attainments or ambitions of any sort, it is not to be 
wondered at that Hildegarde stands sui generis. Re- 
ligious dogma, one must not forget, was in those days 
a matter not to be examined or questioned, but to be 
accepted and adored. 

For the bulk of our personal data, therefore, we 
are largely dependent upon the documents of later 
times. The purely religious data are naturally com- 
posed of the mystical and the non-mystical. "Whether 
the latter, indeed, comes within the purview of this 
study is a question for further discussion. Since our 
plan is inductive, it follows that definitions should 
come last of all; and to separate the mystical data 
from the non-mystical appears to be largely an affair 
of definition. Should we try to solve the problem 
by a change of names, and term our matter normal 
and abnormal, our task is no easier, for the criterion 
by which we judge the norm shifts with the centuries, 
and often with the decades. The non-mystical is not 
necessarily always the normal, though our material- 
istic age prefers to think so. It seems wiser, there- 
fore, for the purpose of present investigation to take 
these terms simply at their face value and so to make 
use of them. Through these two main doorways all 
religious emotion has passed to manifest itself in the 
individual. 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 177 

For the more convenient purposes of classification, 
the personal data have been grouped under three 
main heads : Parentage, Education, and Health. Each 
of these heads is to be considered in the light of as 
many cases as possible, for the sake of the cumulative 
effect of the evidence. In the same manner will the 
rest of the data be grouped under three main heads : 
Beginnings of religious emotion; Conversion; Ter- 
mination of religious emotion. 

These divisions are, of course, susceptible of minor 
subdivisions, while the discussion of conversion- 
phenomena and theory will occupy a separate section. 
The reader will bear in mind the flexible nature of 
much of the evidence, which may cause the omission 
of some and the repetition of other instances, in a 
way that may at first sight appear capricious and 
arbitrary. But with the patient application to each 
minor case of those broad principles underlying their 
confession, which he has just determined, he cannot 
be long impatient or much at fault. 

To sift the facts of value in the history of the con- 
fessant from the facts of no value, is a task which at 
best cannot be complete. In many instances, such 
facts are few; in many others, they become sub- 
merged by the ideas, feelings, and impressions 
which flow abundantly from the writer's pen; in 
others still, the character of the document precludes 
their use. Journals and diaries, dealing only with 
the religious crisis itself, — such as that of Sweden- 
borg, or of Fox, or of Wesley, — omit matter which 
they consider extraneous. Therefore, a study is 



178 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

limited in large measure to records regularly auto- 
^ biographical in form. Even in these, the seeker after 
facts is often disappointed, since the confessant nat- 
urally lays stress on the impression which was strong- 
«4 est in his imagination, and, therefore, does not readily 
discriminate between values. Many names must 
needs be passed over in silence for one or the other of 
these reasons ; and this silence will include most of the 
mediaeval confessants, so enormously significant on 
other counts. The confessant usually gives some de- 
tails on education and the character of his forebears : 
inferences as to his heredity we must of course make 
for ourselves. 

Thomas Boston 8 of Ettrick was piously reared, of 
God-fearing Scots parentage. He was a bookish child 
and well-taught, prepared for college at fourteen, but 
was held back from entrance for a couple of years. 
His career there was brilliant; and he showed much 
taste for music. His preoccupation with the religious 
life came gradually. Jeanne de St. M. Deleloe was 
from infancy vowed to the Blessed Virgin by her fer- 
vent parents, and given the education of a religious. 
Her subsequent mysticism is shown to be a natural 
outcome of her teaching and of her surroundings. 
The same direct inheritance of piety is shown by that 
Quaker family, the Gurneys of Earlham. Their edu- 
cation intensified this spirit and the example of a 
deeply fervent, elder sister completed the cycle of in- 
fluences. The zeal and ardor of St. Paul's character 
was affirmed by his orthodox Hebrew parentage and 
his thorough education. Eolle of Hampole quaintly 
says of himself only: "My youth was fond, my 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 179 

childhood vain, and my young age unclean." Of his 
parents nothing is known. 

The father and mother of Thomas Haliburton ' ' were 
eminently religious. ' ' At school he remained idle and 
dissipated and did not do any work until after his 
eighteenth year, when he began to study for the min- 
istry. Joseph Hall's mother was a woman of rare 
sanctity, who filled his young mind with pious dreams 
and visions. Her weakly body he seems also to have 
inherited. So apt and talented was he, that he was 
sent to college, although one of a family of twelve 
children. Newman's religious education was thor- 
ough ; and while still very young he read such books as 
Law's "Serious Call," Miner's "Church History," 
and Newton ' ' On the Prophecies. ' ' At Oxford he fell 
under the influence of Keble and of Pusey. Nietzsche, 
in the " Ecce Homo, ' ' and in a brief sketch of his child- 
hood, mentions his youthful desire for universal knowl- 
edge, led thereunto by reading Humboldt. Schopen- 
hauer was a great force in his life. He remarks that 
his father was delicate and morbid, and died young. 
At school, the abbot Othloh was first severely beaten, 
but he succeeded by reason of his powerful memory. 
Love of books and the classics much preceded his 
religious interest ; and like Guibert, he felt them to be 
a stumbling-block in the true way. Swedenborg's 
parents were pious, believed warmly in spirits, heard 
voices and saw visions. His father, Bishop Svedberg, 
made note of a personal conversation with an angel. 
The son Emanuel had a thorough education of the 
scientific kind, and when he began to write, it was 
on economics, physiology, and metallurgy. The 



180 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

heredity of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, is as 
significant as Swedenborg % His grandfather, mother, 
and father were subject to religious gloom, dreamed 
dreams, saw visions and lights. The whole family was 
imaginative, lazy, shiftless, and credulous : all showed 
certain literary aptitudes. Deep melancholies and 
doubts beset this family, together with a fear of In- 
dians which is reflected in Joseph 's writings, where he 
identifies the savages with the powers of hell. Joseph 
had little schooling : and prided himself on his illiter- 
acy. His apt memory and ability to pick up and use 
a miscellaneous reading are shown in the Book of Mor- 
mon. John Wesley's parents were of the conven- 
tional, Church of England type, his mother a woman of 
strong character, his education that of an English 
gentleman destined for the Church. The zeal, the 
power, the emotion, were his alone. Uriel d 'Acosta was 
gently educated and could ride the "Great Horse." 
At the proper age he studied law, but religious ideas, 
and his changes of view concerning them, soon ex- 
cluded all other interests in his mind. "I was edu- 
cated," he writes, "according to the custom of that 
country, in the Popish Religion ; and when I was but a 
young man the dread of eternal Damnation made me 
desirous to keep all its doctrines with the utmost exact- 
ness." Henry Alline went early to school and was 
forward in learning. Augustin's relations with his 
mother, Monica, are too widely known to need com- 
ment here. He shows, in truth, very marked traits 
inherited from both parents, and his description is 
sympathetic. "In this my childhood," he says of 
his education, "I had no love of learning and hated 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 181 

to be forced to it. I would not have learned had I 
not been compelled.' ' He liked Latin, but disliked 
Greek ; loved Euclid, but hated Homer, and was much 
beaten because of this. All works of eloquence, * * of a 
dramatic type," appealed to his mind, and he was 
deeply influenced first by a dialogue of Cicero — the 
"Hortensius" — and later by Aristotle. His subse- 
quent career of dissipation terminating in the depres- 
sion and discontent with self, which were the first 
steps toward his conversion, are dealt with under other 
heads. The influence of Monica on her son, both direct 
and indirect, is marked throughout his life. Another 
pious mother had for her son the great Cardinal Bel- 
larmin, whom, with his four brothers, she destined to 
the priesthood. They were the spectators of her fast- 
ing and flagellation; indeed, all their early influences 
turned them to the Church. In addition, however, 
to his strong clerical bent, Bellarmin was talented, 
very quick, and a lover in boyhood of poetry and of 
the classics. He notes his taste for music and sing- 
ing, and that he could mend nets very well. A Jesuit 
at seventeen, he pursues his education thereafter in 
the direction of theology and Hebrew, making a gram- 
mar of the latter tongue, for his own use. Another 
precocious child, whose education aided a development 
first wholly intellectual, but which later became re- 
ligious, and mystical, was Pascal. 

In her curious record of changes in creed, Annie 
Besant describes her father as a sceptic and savant; 
and says that her own ardently religious bent, in the 
beginning, was spontaneous and individual. Robert 
Blair, early left an orphan, was educated at Glasgow 



182 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

College, where Augustin's " Confessions " deeply im- 
pressed him. He developed the gift of extempore 
preaching, and although he had his full share of the 
superstition of his day, yet he showed the gradual 
and steady evolution of his religious nature. Bun- 
yan's schooling amounted to little more than learning 
to read and write. In youth he was exceedingly vi- 
cious ; and was noted always for a vivid imagination. 
Thomas Chalkley is more a man of the world than 
most Quakers; he studied hard in his Philadelphia 
home; and seems to have had normal youthful influ- 
ences. His temporal affairs prospered, showing that 
he had business talent and industry. J. F. Clarke 
was taught classics and mathematics by his grand- 
father; he had much taste for nature and for litera- 
ture. His development was normal. Few Quakers 
give us any information on matters temporal, but 
Richard Davies, unlike many others, was ' i brought up 
in a little learning. ' ' At birth, John Dunton lost his 
mother. He was a sickly child, fanciful and dreamy, 
disliking study. A violent love-affair, at thirteen, 
caused him still further to neglect his education ; but 
a year later he was ready to enter Oxford, C. G. 
Finney's parents were not "professors"; but his 
friends soon turned him toward religion. James 
Fraser of Brae learned well at school, but his temper 
was peevish, he says, and he was no "dawty." The 
strictness of his rearing caused many violent reactions. 
George Fox says little of himself as a child, save that 
he had "gravity and stayedness, with innocency and 
honesty." He had but little book-learning and that 
self-taught. Very different were the cultivated sur- 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 183 

roundings of the Arabian Al-Ghazzali, who was a 
savant at twenty, yet as perplexed about religious 
matters as ever Fox himself. Edmund Gosse con- 
tributes an admirable modern study of heredity in his 
book entitled ' ' Father and Son. ' ' The intensely pious 
parents — members of the strict sect of Plymouth 
Brothers — work on the imagination of their child till 
he becomes an elder at ten. But the father was a 
man of science, and this inheritance, together with the 
crucial intellectual conflict of the fifties, carried the 
son to a total change of view. Evangelistic influences 
of a certain type, with their inevitable effect upon a 
sensitive nature, have never been more admirably de- 
scribed than in this volume, which has the rare virtue 
of sympathy for outworn ideas. 

Unusual in a Quaker, James Gough had "a good 
genius and a propensity to learning, — " and easily 
knew Latin and Greek. He was also given to poetry, 
until convinced of its wickedness. Yet he thinks that 
his youth was ' ' a complication of ambition, envy, craft, 
and deceit, ' ' before his religious interests became dom- 
inant. 

The abbot Guibert de Nogent is one of the more 
direct examples of hereditary mysticism. The ex- 
cessive piety of his parents kept them apart for much 
of their married life; and when his mother left him 
alone at eight years old to enter a convent, she already 
spoke of demons and visions as matters of daily occur- 
rence. His training was very severe ; he followed his 
mother's example and at twelve became a monk. There 
ensues between them a correspondence full of their 
visions and mystical experiences by which each 



184 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

seeks to excite and animate the fervor of the other. 
Like the preceding example, and many another, Gui- 
bert sacrificed his poetic tastes, and turned, at cost of 
many sighs, to the study of theology. The same mys- 
tical atmosphere surrounded Madame de la Mothe- 
Guyon in her infancy ; her parents, too, were zealots, 
although she thinks that in every way but the religious 
they neglected her and her education. It is worthy of 
note that she accuses practically every one with whom 
she comes into contact, of neglect and persecution, — 
sisters and servants, husband, mother-in-law, and the 
world in general, — all, according to her narrative, 
unite in tormenting this harmless girl. Even her ex- 
tremely ostentatious humility, the irritating way in 
which she turns the other cheek, and makes gifts to 
those who beat her, is not enough to account for such 
systematic and continuous persecution; it ends by 
making the reader sceptical, as though it were a de- 
lusion. 

A. J. C. Hare gives an interesting record of a 
severely devout education, the fervency of which, how- 
ever, did not retain its full effect upon his gentle, 
somewhat dilettante character. Frederic Harrison, in 
his " Apologia, ' ' draws a picture of the via media, of 
a healthy upbringing, simple, cheerful ideas, holding 
neither hell nor terror, followed by a gradual evolu- 
tion to more scientific views. James Lackington is of 
peasant-stock and self-taught. Through many de- 
vious wanderings in faith, he returns at the end to his 
inherited simplicity. John Livingstone underwent the 
customary arduous Scottish education ; he says he was 
well-beaten and so became proficient! His religious 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 185 

feelings developed slowly and gradually superseded 
every other interest. The comte Lomenie de Brienne 
evidently drew a certain zeal from his father, the pious 
Huguenot minister to Henri IV, but a court-educa- 
tion was followed by violent dissipation and mania, so 
that much of his later life was spent at St. Lazare. 
The parents of Henry More were Calvinists, and he 
was severely reared, yet he did not naturally turn to 
that faith, being of a speculative mind. Knowledge 
and learning were at first the most important objects 
of his life ; his religious ideas were slowly evolved and 
came to take first place. John Newton, the son of 
poor parents, had but two years' regular schooling. 
By the aid of a powerful memory, however, he " picked 
up" French and Latin, and after his conversion he 
taught himself both Greek and Hebrew. As a boy, 
he is not quite so illiterate as Patrick, the saintly 
swineherd, who terms his own writings ''drivel." 

Bishop Symon Patrick, that cheerful person, blesses 
God for his bookish family and his careful training. 
This included short-hand, with which he noted ser- 
mons. He went to Cambridge as a sizar, but soon ob- 
tained a scholarship, work, and friends. Paulinus (of 
Pella) gives an interesting account of his pre-Christian 
education. He read Homer and Plato in his fifth 
year, but his studies were interrupted by ill-health. 
Mark Pattison's uncommonly slow development in- 
terfered with the normal course of his college career. 
When he does begin to develop in the early twenties, 
he says, "I read enormously." Renan's Breton par- 
entage brought the Breton inheritance of dreamy 
imagination. He also, he thinks, inherited his "in- 



186 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

capacity of being bad. ' ' Placed in a Roman Catholic 
seminary, he had in all respects the clerical training, 
added to the temperament of a priest. Only his in- 
tellect, unfettered, gigantic, turned toward "la 
science positive" making all else of no regard. Few 
personal studies remain to us of more value and 
suggestiveness. 

Among the more vivid records, that of M. A. 
Schimmelpenninck gives the picture of a pietist 
rearing. Delicate and frail, at the side of an ailing 
mother, this girl undergoes a strenuously thorough 
religious education. Taught by a father who thinks 
it his duty to be harsh, she suffers agonies of nervous 
dread and misery. The ensuing resentment, reaction, 
and shrinking from everything religious, culminating 
in melancholy and conversion, seem to be thoroughly 
explained by these facts. Teresa's parents were noble 
and gave her the upbringing of a woman of the 
world. Her entrance into convent-life did not alter 
this ideal for some time, until, indeed, she began to 
burn with the zeal for reform. She says little of 
her early self, but shows in every line she wrote 
her executive ability. Leon Tolstoi was also of a noble 
family, and brought up as the conventional young 
aristocrat. From this life, however, he later turned 
in horror, as did another Russian noble, G. Schow- 
valofli. Anna van Schurman was trained first in 
the arts ; and had done wonders in glass-etching, tap- 
estry, and paper flowers, before she turned her at- 
tention to Hebrew and the classics. She was chiefly 
taught by her father, from whom she had her serious 
and scholarly inclinations. Blanco White, like Renan, 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 187 

was educated for the priesthood. The piety of his 
parents was mingled with other characteristics in his 
strange personality. George Whitefield was "to- 
ward," disliked study, and had an impudent temper. 
His dramatic tastes developed young and lasted all his 
life. At Oxford he set to work in earnest. In the 
"Dialogue with Trypho," Justin Martyr outlines a 
brief account of his education, of his inborn love of 
philosophy, and of how he turned toward Christian 
ideas. 

Details of education and heredity among the earlier 
minor Eoman Catholic cases, we have already stated 
to be few. Save that she was an "indocta mulier," 
and concealed her revelations from her family, Hilde- 
garde of Bingen gives no information. The Mere 
Jeanne des Anges had thoroughly upset her family 
with her extravagances by her fifteenth year, so in de- 
spair they sent her to a convent. She seems to have 
been given a good education and was very fond of 
reading. Loyola received the training of a Spanish 
aristocrat and soldier, "delighting in feats of arms." 
In these words he dismisses the matter as trifling. 
That "little, prittie Tobie," as Charles I calls Sir 
Tobie Matthew, was trained in Protestantism and for 
a career of diplomacy. When he began to be inter- 
ested in Catholicism, his father's thunderings seemed 
to have but hastened his decision. Gertrude More's 
father disciplined her severely, yet her girlhood was 
wilful and headstrong. De Marsay had Protestant 
parents who gave him a devout, upbringing. The 
young Angelique Arnauld, one of a deeply religious 
family, fulfilled her destiny and heritage when she 



188 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

became a mystic. Both Sainte-Chantal and M. M. 
Alacoque came of devout parents. Paul Lowengard 
and Alphonse de Ratisbonne were both of Jewish de- 
scent. The former, in temperament being sensitive to 
religious ideas, suffered from the mockery of his free- 
thinking father; so that his conversion to Catholicism 
seemed more or less inevitable. The latter 's family 
were deeply fervent in their religious nature, and a 
brother preceded him into the Roman Catholic Church. 
This is also the case of F. Liebermann. Although 
: J. J. Olier had orthodox parents, yet they doubted his 
vocation because of his heady temperament, and so 
gave him a worldly training. F. Ozanam's devout 
nature was shared by every member of his family; his 
sister "was as pious as an angel," and his college life 
was filled with religious struggles and triumphs. An- 
other convert, Fanny Pittar, had conventional parents, 
a normal education, and a lively disposition. The 
famous Antoinette Bourignon suffered much because 
her father and mother quarrelled, and jeered at her 
infantile devotion. She felt obliged to leave home, 
and, later, became a recluse. John Eudes says that 
his parents were humble and pious like himself. Mary 
of the Angels was vain and fond of dress : the gentle- 
ness of a kind priest influenced for good her educa- 
tion and nature. Sister Therese, Carmelite, was one 
of five sisters, who all took the veil. Religious matters 
had always formed the chief occupation of this family. 
Carre de Montgeron was spoiled by an indulgent 
father and gave himself up to pleasure. His own 
wickedness, however, soon alarmed him and he began 
to think of reform. The parents of Anne Catherine 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 189 

Emmerich encouraged her in practices of excessive 
devotion, with the least possible food and sleep. One 
does not often find a confessant congratulating her- 
self with a pious joy on her complete ignorance. 
" Grace a Dieu," she cries, "je n'ai presque jamais 
rien lu." Peter Favre, the friend of Loyola, was 
brought up "by good, Catholic, and pious parents,' ' 
who saw his ability and sent him to school, instead 
of rearing him a Savoyard shepherd like themselves. 
Hugo of St. Victor gives an account of his studies 
and his progress, much as does John of Salisbury. In 
a group of modern Catholic converts, giving brief ac- 
counts of their submission, will be found several 
Swedenborgians, whose parents were unable to satisfy 
them by rearing them in the mystical tenets of that 
sect. 9 The nun Osanna Andreasi had parents so ex- 
traordinary for the seventeenth century, that when 
she began to have divine visions and conversations, 
they thought her epileptic and insisted that she con- 
sult a physician ! 

Henry Suso inherited both his mysticism and his 
nervous temperament from a devout mother. Frau- 
lein Malwida von Meysenbug had a keen natural 
piety, but received no training whatever. The cult of 
heroes was, for a long time, her childish religion. She 
underwent a long struggle with the aristocratic prej- 
udices of her family, and finally was obliged to 
break with them. John Trevor had a conventional 
education in religious matters, and was early im- 
pressed by the tragic side of life. H. Fielding writes 
that he was piously reared, and by women only. D. 
Jarratt came of poor parents, and was being led into 



il90 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

vice by his idle, dissipated brothers. By his mind 
and memory, however, he gained his schoolmaster's in- 
terest, and so was saved to be trained for a teacher. 
During boyhood H. Martyn's relations badgered him 
with pious exhortations; at college he was irritable 
at being unsuccessful. On his father's death he be- 
came more thoughtful. J. Lathrop had a devout 
mother and was early susceptible to religious con- 
tagion. Helen Keller 's entire education is of great in- 
terest. The religious side of it was conducted by Philr 
lips Brooks, and accepted by her without question. 
Though Friedrich Schleiermacher's mother was de- 
vout, yet she could not keep her son from a phase of 
peculiar scepticism. After some time his college career 
at Halle steadied his mind. J. de la Fontaine shared 
the piety of his Huguenot family, and, though he 
failed in his studies, became a minister. A large num- 
ber of Quakers were born to some faith equally rigid ; 
and given the severe training in morals which was 
common one hundred years or more ago. Education 
among this group is represented by but a few years' 
schooling. Such instances present very little which 
may distinguish the one from the other in this par- 
ticular; it is therefore hardly worth our while to 
give separate mention to the family influences and 
education of J. Hoag, 0. Sansom, E. Stirredge, W. 
Williams, R. Follows, C. Marshall, J. Fothergill, R. 
Jordan, J. Croker, Daniel Wheeler, David Hall, J. 
Wigham, William Evans, S. Neale, A. Braithwaite, J. 
Richardson, H. Hull, M. Hagger, J. Dickinson, T. 
Shillitoe, B. Bangs, J. Hoskins, and Ann Maris. 
Christopher Story's father kept a tavern, by which 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 191 

the son was much subjected to temptation. John Grat- 
ton was a poor ignorant herd-boy. George White- 
head was bred a Presbyterian, and Mary Dudley 
educated as a Methodist, but the result upon each 
nature is much the same. Few are as healthily reared 
as Margaret Lucas, who was taught music and danc- 
ing; or allowed to be frivolous and read novels and 
plays like William Lewis. Mildred Ratcliff's mother, 
seeing the child morbid and depressed, urged her 
away from religious subjects; while Stephen Grellet, 
born a conventional French Catholic, is later horrified 
at his own "worldly" upbringing. He had "scarcely 
so much as heard whether there were any Holy 
Ghost"! John Banks's poor, honest parents do not 
seem to have worried him much about religion. 

If the Friends were in general an humble and un- 
learned sect, it will be remembered that their leader, 
Fox, was at no time a man of books. John Wesley, 
on the contrary, had more than the customary Latinity 
and cultivation, and John Calvin had the training 
of a scholar. The majority of Methodist examples are 
much like the Quakers in the respect that they are 
simple and unlettered. Among other Dissenters, 
George Muller, who was an exceedingly vicious youth, 
had worldly parents, and was given little or no moral 
training. Oliver Heywood fears that he grieved his 
good, careful parents; but at college he changed and 
came to prefer divinity to the classics. Ashbel 
Green, James Melvill, Alexander Gordon, and William 
Haslett had pious inheritances and strict care. John 
Murray's parents were very strict during his child- 
hood, and he suffered from their discipline. William 



192 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Wilson's peasant father and mother were illiterate, 
and he was put, like St. Patrick, to be a herd-boy. 
Cotton Mather's heredity and education were of the 
strictest type: Oliver Taylor's parents, if poor, were 
pious; A. H. Francke's education was theological al- 
most from the beginning ; and Samuel Hopkins had a 
pious ancestry and college training. On the contrary, 
J. A. James notes that he had no religious training 
whatever, a circumstance which, as the reader has 
doubtless already observed, is decidedly rare among 
these cases. The Methodists, of devout parentage and 
careful early rearing, of whom little else need be said, 
are : John Prickard, R. Rodda, R. Roberts, T. Payne, 
A. Mather, P. Jaco, J. Young, J. Travis, William 
Capers, J. Allen, Ben. Rhodes, T. Rankin, J. Nelson, 
Freeborn Garretson, Peard Dickinson, A. Torry, T. 
Ware, T. Hanson, T. Tennant, J. Mason, and William 
Carvosso. Neither of J. Marsden 's parents was at first 
religious, but later his mother had an attack of re- 
ligious mania, which made a deep impression on his 
mind. 

Opposed to these, however, are a number of Metho- 
dist examples lacking pious early influences or in- 
heritances. Samson Staniforth, one of thirteen chil- 
dren, can remember no religious instruction whatever. 
J. Pawson's family were disgusted with his zeal, and 
used him harshly. T. Hanby lost his mother, had a 
drunken father, and lacked all training. B. Hibbard, 
the eighth child of a poor shoemaker, was harshly 
treated and much beaten ; Duncan Wright had received 
no education whatever until nearly twenty, when he 
enlisted. Neither had J. Furz much religious in- 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 19S 

struction. M. Joyce, born a Catholic, was a sailor and 
a very wild youth. T. Rutherford, though his parents 
were religious, and he devoted to them, yet was led 
away, influenced by vicious comrades. C. Hopper, 
the youngest of nine children of a farmer, thinks his 
family cold as to religion. T. Walsh, of an Irish 
Catholic family, was bred quite indifferent to the 
subject. W. Ashman's parents had no religion. Very 
interesting in this regard are the cases of the Evan- 
gelists Jerry McAuley and Billy Bray. The first, of 
a criminal Irish family, was a thief during boyhood 
and imprisoned at nineteen. The latter, by seven- 
teen, was also a criminal, and a drunkard, but he 
had a pious father. Normal upbringing, and natural 
childish indifference to the subject of religion, is 
noted (in the case of the first with horror) by C. S. 
Spurgeon and by Orville Dewey. 

Henry "Ward Beecher was the child of sensible and 
intelligent people, reared in an active-minded New 
England household. Granville Moody had normal 
family influences and education, though he was still a 
boy when he began to worry about the liquor ques- 
tion. Interesting, indeed, by comparison with the 
foregoing, are the scattered bits of information which 
Jerome gives us about his childhood and education: 
". . . how I ran about the offices where the slaves 
worked . . . how I had to be dragged from my grand- 
mother 's lap to my lessons," and so on. Long ere 
his conversion, he had cut himself off from this pleas- 
ant, cultivated home and dainty food, because of his re- 
ligious ideas. Unfortunately for us, he does not con- 
tinue the personal part of his famous " Apology." 



194 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

The result of this collocation of evidence is seen 
to be, after all, by no means negative. A pre- 
ponderance of persons whose interest in religions 
matters was fostered by parental teaching and ex- 
ample, throws into strong relief the few in whom 
this was not the case. The effects of direct heredity 
are to be seen in more families than it is possible to 
recapitulate here. The question of education — if that 
term be limited to book-learning, is much less im- 
portant, if it be important at all. The range of emo- 
tional religious experience is wide enough to include 
the saint and the savant (Augustin, Bellarmin), the 
tinker and the maidservant (Bunyan, Joanna South- 
cott). 

That the tendency toward emotional religious 
processes is hereditary, fostered and heightened by 
family atmosphere and family training, is proved, by 
the aggregate of these examples, beyond the possibility 
of doubt. Cases in which this family tendency is 
absent altogether, in which the religious interest is 
wholly individual, — although they have been made 
much of in certain quarters, — are seen to be too few to 
contribute any substantial weight to any opposite 
theory. 

Although the facts concerning the subject's parent- 
age, heredity, and education are often interesting and 
suggestive in regard to his religious development, yet 
they have no such significance as have the data of 
health. This is, in truth, the most important con- 
tributing physical factor to the entire result, and one 
given, in one form or another, in practically every case. 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 195 

The manner in which it is furnished may vary exceed- 
ingly; the data may be dwelt upon at length, or 
dropped in passing, may be much over-emphasized in 
order to throw some miraculous recovery into relief, 
or may be touched upon only as matter of "mis- 
interpreted observation. ' ' The simplest and most 
thorough method for analysis would seem to be that 
of grouping together, first, those confessants whose 
health has on the whole been poor; second, those 
whose health has on the whole been good; and third, 
those exhibiting mental derangement or any defined 
pathological conditions, which require separate con- 
sideration. 

The reader will note that an especial reference is 
made, wherever possible, to the physical situation of 
the subject in childhood and during the period of 
puberty; since this is most essential to the proper 
understanding of his case. 

Discussion of the conclusions to which these data 
point, must necessarily, according to our inductive 
plan, be made later and be drawn from them. In 
the section on "Mysticism/' there must needs be a 
return upon, and a repetition of, these. The whole 
question of religious experience has been clouded for 
most of us by a misunderstanding of the health data ; 
the student vibrating between the attitude of the medi- 
cal materialist, to whom every example is crazy, or 
hysterical, or neurasthenic; and that of the ecstatic 
pietist, to whom Catherine of Genoa and Catherine of 
Siena represent the highest types of health. Aban- 
doning for the present all a priori conclusions and all 
unscientific and unjustified attitudes and theories, we 



196 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

shall give ourselves up for a few pages to the humble 
task of finding out what the facts about this matter 
really are. Dull though this may be, partaking little 
of the exhilaration attached to glittering generalities, 
it has the advantage at least of being a task under- 
taken austerely, in the service of truth. 

The first group — the mediaeval records — give us no 
classified health data, and commonly omit all reference 
to childhood. Angela da Foligno gives no physical 
facts before she became a mystical recluse. There- 
after, however, she mentions intense bodily suffering. 
"Never am I without pain, continually am I weak 
and frail. ... I am obliged to be always lying 
down . . . my members are twisted . . . also am I un- 
able to take sufficient food.'' Margaret Ebnerin, of 
the Gottesfreunde, notes her own intolerable sufferings 
when meditating on the Passion. Blood poured out 
of her mouth and nose ; she remained comatose. Pain 
in the head and trembling were other symptoms of 
this attack, which was suddenly cured on an Easter 
Saturday. The nun Veronique Giuliani had a similar 
attack, the pain lasting for over twelve years. The 
stigmata and other symptoms followed, and the Church 
made them matter of investigation. Another nun, 
Osanna Andreasi, was suspected by her parents of 
epilepsy. Mary of the Angels, Carmelite, brought 
herself into a state of aggravated illness by her aus- 
terities. She was subject to attacks which were cured 
by a direct command of her confessor. In this case 
the exorcism of earlier times is seen in practice. The 
mystical abbess, Maria d'Agreda, was as a child sub- 
ject to great variations in mood. When she became 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 197 

a visionary, she suffered intensely; her body, she 
says, "was weak and broken." Sister Therese, Car- 
melite, at nine years old, had an illness resembling 
meningitis. She was never strong thereafter, at thir- 
teen suffered acutely because of religious scruples, 
and, shortly after taking the veil, died of consump- 
tion. An obscure illness afflicted A. C. Emmerich at 
the age of fourteen, and she had several visions. As 
these grew more frequent, her health steadily declined. 
A similar illness increased the piety of Peter Favre. 
Joanna Southcott's extraordinary delusion that she 
was about to give birth to the Messiah was undoubtedly 
due to an illness, and is not uncommon. Of her health 
as a child, she says nothing save that her dreams were 
intensely vivid. R. Baxter had symptoms of tubercu- 
losis in youth, and grew very weak, besides having 
1 ' difficulties in his concernments. ' ' On recovery these 
disappeared. Thomas Boston ailed constantly as a 
result of improper nourishment at college. Dyspepsia 
and fainting-fits followed him through life. He died 
in middle age from a complication of maladies. Dur- 
ing the attacks of illness his Calvinism grew more 
harsh and his gloom deeper. The Mere Jeanne de St. 
M. Deleloe was born nearly dead. After taking 
the veil, her health grew increasingly bad. She was 
always falling ill, and her religious state became one 
of gloom and doubt. Weak from illness and terror of 
her condition, she suffers constant pain, can hardly 
stand for trembling, and during this time undergoes 
frightful temptations to blasphemy; with sleepless- 
ness, diabolic persecution, and so forth. She passes 
out of this condition and recovers a portion of her 



198 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

normal health, but illness recurs at shorter and shorter 
intervals, until death comes at fifty-six. Gertrude of 
Eisleben's general health appears to have been poor, 
but she gives no details of any value. The physique 
of Thomas Haliburton was never robust; he dies, in 
his thirties, of a pleurisy. Bishop Joseph Hall tells us 
of his health only that it did not permit him to over- 
study. Hildegarde of Bingen notes many illnesses, 
by which she was beaten and overwhelmed "even from 
my mother's breast." After her fourteenth year she 
grew stronger till middle age, when she seems to have 
suffered an inflammation followed by catalepsy; dur- 
ing ecstasy "her veins and flesh dry up," and she 
took to her bed. She had her first visions at three, 
at eight had others and took the vows; at fifteen 
they became frequent. Her physical and nervous suf- 
fering during ecstasy was intense. Jerome writes that 
"a deep-seated fever fell upon my weakened body . . . 
and wasted my unhappy frame. ' ' It was during this 
illness his famous dream occurred. No less a saint, 
Ignatius Loyola, while gallantly fighting at the siege of 
Pampeluna, was severely wounded in both legs, it be- 
ing necessary to re-break and reset one. During his 
painful and tedious convalescence, thoughts of another 
world began to occupy his mind, till then filled by the 
love of his lady. On recovery, he went on pilgrim- 
age through Spain dressed as a mendicant, and it is in- 
teresting to read that here he began to see visions 
hanging in the heated air. After such an illness, in- 
sufficiently fed and wandering all day under a Spanish 
sun, we are not surprised that depression fell upon 
him, and that, when entering a monastery and practis- 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 199 

ing all austerities, he should be "violently tempted to 
throw himself out of the window of his cell. ' ' Othloh 
had a bad fever and delirium, taking the form of a 
castigation by demons, and he reluctantly contem- 
plated entering the monastery. A second illness, caus- 
ing temporary paralysis, was needed to complete his 
conversion, and his health thereafter is not noted. Al- 
though Wesley had a trying illness just at the time of 
his change in views, and was a slight, small man of 
delicate physique, with a chronic bilious catarrh, yet 
his later health must have been of iron to permit those 
evangelistic feats of preaching, those horseback jour- 
neys over all the length and breadth of England. 
Henry Alline fell so ill at fourteen that he hardly 
cared to live. He kept late hours and lived unwhole- 
somely, while his "conscience would roar night 
and day." Matters grew worse, and he died of a 
decline at thirty-six. Augustin makes note of an 
illness from weak lungs, and conditions of nervous ex- 
haustion after his Carthage experiences, but he gives 
no general health data. Bellarmin's health seems to 
have been consistently bad ; he was a chronic sufferer 
from insomnia and headache; at one time his lungs 
were threatened; at another he nearly died of a dys- 
entery. Blair owns to severe illnesses. A tertian 
fever came, he thinks, because "I was puffed up by 
profiting well in my bairnly studies." A poor regi- 
men at college helped to injure his health, as well as 
encouraged him in seeing visions. Charles Bray had 
a delicate childhood and was ever under suspicion of 
phthisis. Bunyan's tumults and melancholies are in- 
termittent, and he often connects them with ' ' weakness 



200 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

in the outer man." Peter Cartwright 's conversion- 
crisis took the form of an attack in which "my heart 
palpitated and in a few minutes I turned blind. ' ' In 
later life he was strong. The reader cannot for- 
get what befell Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damas- 
cus, whether he believe it to have been an ophthalmia 
or no. "The stone' ' was an especial discipline to the 
sedentary person in the past; and Stephen Crisp is 
among those who suffered from it. Fraser of Brae 
says he was not like to live as an infant, but was whole- 
some thereafter in his childhood. At eighteen, re- 
ligious torment fell upon him, upset his health and dis- 
turbed his mind. Later, an illness is associated with 
a very black relapse of melancholy and horror. The 
Arabian philosopher Al-Ghazzali was completely pros- 
trated nervously by his search for the truth, and for 
a time could neither talk, swallow, nor digest. Mme. 
Guyon was a fragile infant, frequently ill; at nine, 
she nearly died ; and another severe malady beset her 
at conversion. A bad attack of smallpox follows later. 
Indeed, her ill-health on the mystical way, beset by hor- 
rible visions and fiendish manifestations, is continuous. 
Alice Hayes was delicate and lame; Joseph Hoag, 
"of a weakly make, with gatherings in the ears"; 
but he improved, till at eighteen, he pined away and 
wasted, thinking the Devil was coming for him in 
person. Francis Howgill tersely describes himself 
during his mental conflict : " I became a perfect fool, I 
was as a man distracted," from weakness and sleep- 
lessness. Lutfullah, the Mohammedan Pundit, who 
was a man at eight years old, has a severe illness there- 
after which leaves him weakened. His devotion to the 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 201 

faith of Mahomet never wavers, while his natural piety 
is extraordinary. Any reader of Macready's diary 
will recall how the serious and devout tone heightens 
after a severe illness. Bishop Symon Patrick was in 
great danger from a fever when twelve years old, 
whereupon he took serious resolves. Later, overstudy 
brings on a "sore distemper," but he takes warning, 
and at eighty, when his narrative closes, seems to 
have been hale and hearty. Ill-health interrupted the 
studies of Paulinus Pellaeus, whose doctor ordered 
him an outdoor life. Mark Pattison, as a boy, was 
highly nervous and delicate, tardy in development, 
and had trouble with his eyes. During his pious and 
Puseyite period and the reaction therefrom, his health 
suffered from insomnia, depression, and palpitations; 
but he came out of this safely, and does not further 
comment on physical conditions. Renan is another 
free-thinker whose early religious phase is strong 
enough and minutely enough described, to warrant his 
inclusion in the lists. He was a frail infant and feeble 
child, and later his back was bent and his health was 
injured by incessant study. His conversion to free- 
thought bears almost the same symptoms, physical 
and nervous, as the more orthodox conversions, and is 
compared by him to "une violente encephalite, durant 
laquelle toutes les autres fonetions de la vie furent 
suspendues en moi." Mrs. Schimmelpenninck was 
constantly ill as a young child, and had nervous fears 
of the dark. * ' I was by nature timid, I had from my 
cradle miserable health," she says. A spinal weak- 
ness developed later, and her gloom increased with the 
necessary inaction. Terror rode her like a hag, terror 



202 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of the dark and of her father — fear of everything, like 
Harriet Martineau. Elizabeth Stirredge is so miser- 
able in her tender years, of such a sad heart, weeping 
and praying, that her mother feared a decline. Suso 
is one of those monastic examples where a naturally 
strong person, "full of fire and life, ' ' is brought, by 
self -torments and the cloistered regimen, into a ruin- 
ous and shattered state of morbid mind and nerves. 
He notes a catalepsy — to our modern ideas it is a 
marvel that he survived at all the hideous self-tortures 
imposed by his faith. Teresa's is a similar case of 
this particular type. She was a healthy child and a 
young girl of bounding vitality and love of life. She 
had been cloistered for some time, when a long illness 
set her to reading Augustin and caused her ideas to 
take on a darker hue. When they once fairly begin, 
the phenomena of mysticism progress steadily ; but her 
case is sui generis in that she retained to the end a 
high degree of bodily vigor. Teresa is the rare ex- 
ample of the mystic who yet possessed a healthy en- 
ergy, efficiency, and executive ability, and for this 
reason it is totally misleading to use her as a type. 
F. A. von der Kemp, impairing his health at college 
by chemical research and overstudy, soon became ex- 
cited by religious subjects and began to make an en- 
quiry as to truth. J. Blanco White had an illness in 
youth which persisted through life and which was fos- 
tered by his morbid shyness. Several short fits of 
sickness influenced George Whitefield at a time when 
Charles Wesley had moved his mind. His depression 
was so great that his relatives thought him insane. 
A sudden abstinence precipitated an illness of six or 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 203 

seven weeks, during which the crisis is overpast. But 
Whitefield was of a vigorous physique, whom one 
would hardly consider as other than healthy. Illnesses 
shake the youth of Isaac Williams, but the conditions 
of this case cause it properly to be classed under an- 
other heading. Solomon Mack, the grandfather of 
Joseph Smith, had his visionary lights when severely 
ill with rheumatism. At seventy-six he wrote of 
"many sore accidents in his childhood," and suffered 
from the prevalent dread of Indians. 

The Quaker group furnishes much significant data 
on health matters. James Gough was undersized and 
his constitution was weak and tender. M. Lucas's 
excessive piety so exhausts her vitality that she is 
prostrated. She remarks that at the time she was 
"seized with a weakness of the body," which lasted 
the rest of her life. Elizabeth Collins leaves a record 
of illness beginning ere she was twelve. On the other 
hand, John Churchman seems to have held his con- 
sumption in check by his outdoor life and horseback 
journeys. A severe illness brought W. Lewis "dread- 
fully to feel the state I was in." Catherine Phillips, 
whose girlhood was hideous with terror of guilt, re- 
marks that she was several times "visited with fevers 
which brought me very low." At ten, David Hall 
had smallpox which left him with a nervous affection 
resembling palsy. He seemed almost idiotic for sev- 
eral years. At twenty, he was beset with religious 
ardor to exhort others, and with many zealous ex- 
travagances. The state of irreligion in France excites 
Mildred Ratcliff, a poor widow in delicate health and 
with seven children, and she sets out on foot as a 



204 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

preacher. The Lord instantly sent her renewed health 
and strength for this task, which she never once, of 
course, connects with fresh air and exercise. Samuel 
Neale was brought very low by smallpox at twelve, 
wherefore he covenanted with God. Fever adds to his 
depression at conversion. Anna Braithwaite 's friends 
send for the doctor during her period of conflict, while 
John Richardson allows that he "was weak in body. ,, 
'Joseph Oxley from accident was dwarfed and de- 
formed. Henry Hull was a good boy, but at nine years 
old he had an illness, and thereafter took solitary 
walks, and at sixteen had serious impressions. His 
health remained poor and his spirits low. George 
Bewly, a morbid lad, was fearful at twelve of losing 
his innocency from contact with rude companions. 
During illness the tempter sets upon him and he bar- 
gains with God for a return of health. A malady 
when she was sixteen brought serious thoughts to Mary 
Hagger. Benjamin Bangs has poor health; and John 
Gratton is visited with a grievous illness just before 
his conversion. A fit of sickness nigh unto death 
seems to Jane Hoskins to signify that she should emi- 
grate to Pennsylvania. Patrick Livingstone is at 
times subject to "infirmities and sickness," which 
bring deep melancholies and heart-searchings. All 
John Fothergill tells us is that he had "many afflict- 
ing dispensations. ' ' He fasts and goes without sleep 
for months. A. Jaffray falls into "a dull, languid 
frame," when worried about religion. Edith Jefferis 
and Mary Dudley were tuberculous. The former had 
one of those slow cases of consumption oftener met 
with in past days than now. The latter, always frail, 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 205 

had many bouts of illness when a child, and later 
"was affected to trembling." It is typhus fever 
which shakes the guilty soul of Daniel Wheeler. 

There are certain cases of which we can note only 
that they "enjoyed poor health," as the phrase was, 
without learning further particulars. Such were John 
Prickard, Thomas Rankin, John Furz, John Pritchard. 
Thomas Oliver's severe illness brings him to serious 
thoughts, while restless nights, terrifying dreams, and 
other nervous symptoms cause Peter Jaco to resolve 
upon reform. Jacob Young had a sickness at three 
which left him a confirmed asthmatic, and a sickly, 
home-kept boy. After his conversion at ten his health 
improved, but mental reactions tread hard on the heels 
of physical ones throughout his life. Asthma and 
bad dreams together at the age of twelve stirred Lor- 
enzo Dow to piety and despair; William Capers, a 
fragile and puny child, is often ill; but his health 
greatly improves later in life, and he is shown to be 
a well-balanced, sensible, and unemotional type of 
person. Satan attacked John Allen during an illness, 
and threw him very low. Like Cardan, R. Wilkinson 
was often frighted by dreams and waked shrieking. 
Depression after fever affects George Shadford to such 
a degree of misery about his future state, that he has 
thoughts of suicide. J. W. de la Flechere's self -ob- 
servation is more minute than that of most when 
he remarks: "I have sometimes observed that when 
the body is brought low, Satan gains an advan- 
tage over the Soul!" In his case, watching, fast- 
ing, and abstinence from meat bring an inevita- 
ble consumption. Illness in his early twenties 



B06 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

brought John Nelson into great fear and dis- 
tress. High fever and blood-pressure add to the 
hideous terror of John Haime, who laments his sin, 
"howling like a wild beast." After being in bad 
health as a child for two years, Christopher Hopper 
was pronounced incurable, whereat, he says, ' ' I judged 
it was high time to prepare for a future state," and 
began to read and pray. On his recovery, his senti- 
ments cool. Mary Fletcher was a backward child of 
weak understanding, whose conversion was attended 
with markedly nervous and pathological symptoms. 
She is always ailing or ill, yet is energetic in the work 
of the Methodist Society. Many consumptives display 
the first indications of their condition during their 
period of religious stress. So did Thomas Walsh, who 
is dead of his disease, at twenty-eight. The constitu- 
tion of Peard Dickinson was weak from birth; fever 
marked his religious conflict; but on emerging into 
light, he gains some access of strength, although his 
health remains poor to the end of his life. Although 
exceedingly sensitive and anxious, yet Joshua Mars- 
den observed no illness until he reached the age of 
twenty. Charles Wesley's conversion followed upon 
weak health and palpitations of the heart. He never 
had the vigor of his famous brother. Thomas Ware 
was so prostrated by disease at about sixteen, during 
religious struggles, that he was little better than a 
maniac. During a sudden attack attended with vio- 
lent delirium and convulsions, Eichard Williams, a 
surgeon of free-thinking tendencies, was overwhelmed 
with terror as to his future. On his recovery he be- 
came a believer. Sharp bouts of illness heightened the 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 207 

mental conflicts of Andrew Sherburne. Upon George 
Muller, his vices brought a train of ills by which he is 
at length warned. "When Luther Rice was a little boy, 
his excessive and gloomy piety impaired his health. 
James Marsh was phthisical, and John Stevenson 
scrofulous. Ashbel Green fell into a poor condition 
from overstudy, and grew anxious about his soul. 
William Neill, as a boy afflicted with a serious disorder, 
betook himself to secret prayer. One of David Brain- 
erd's worst seasons of gloom befell him during the 
measles. T. R. Gates had a pleurisy when fourteen ; 
he shuddered at the fear of death, and saw a vision of a 
black man. He suffered from steadily progressive weak 
health, with insomnia, melancholy, and fear of suicide. 
John Winthrop, at fourteen, had a fever. Though he 
had previously been " lewdly disposed,' ' he now be- 
took himself to God. Joseph Thomas, lame from 
a tuberculous swelling, and sickly always, yet heard the 
call to preach when he was only sixteen years old. 
Thomas Scott, being in doubtful health, was much 
disquieted, and turned to an arduous search for the 
truth which led him through devious ways. Jacob 
Knapp's health declined from his mental distress on 
the subject of religion. Orville Dewey at first was 
strong, and indifferent to his salvation. Overwork 
at college brought on "a nervous disorder of the 
brain," which injured his general health for the rest 
of his life. He began immediately to be worried about 
doctrine. Jerry McAuley turned to thoughts of re- 
ligion upon imprisonment for theft, during which his 
health was affected. C. S. Spurgeon's nerves were 
much upset by the crisis of puberty. H. Fielding 



208 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

writes that lie was delicate and ailing, morbid and 
fearful. Fraulein von Meysenbug was delicate; her 
morbid speculations led her to a sort of pantheism. 
'John Trevor describes himself as a frail baby and a 
morbid, sensitive child, who suffered tortures from 
nightmares. At the crisis of puberty he underwent 
much suffering; and his conversion is followed by a 
physical collapse. He had poor health all his life and 
many fits of nervous illness. 

Among the Moravian testimonies, which so moved 
JWesley that he copied them into his journal, we read 
that David Nitschman fell into a fit of sickness and 
turned to despair for a whole year. A long, danger- 
ous illness influenced the religious crisis of Christian 
David. The other Moravians and the minor Roman 
Catholic cases listed under the heading of " Roads to 
Rome in America, ' ' contain no health data of any sig- 
nificance. 

The poor health of mystics has frequently been made 
the subject of comment; and the conditions of 
life in mediaeval convents and monasteries would seem 
fully to account for it. Yet it is odd to note how 
slight a difference exists in this regard between the 
cloistered nun and the travelling Quaker. The mysti- 
cal philosopher de St. Martin was a weakly crea- 
ture. De Marsay, a devout youth, who prayed for 
days together, was at no time strong of body. The 
terrible mental distress into which he fell was soon 
aggravated by signs of consumption ; but he improved 
in health after a time. The death of his wife in mel- 
ancholy and gloom, having ruined her constitution by 
her austerities, appeared to have its effect on his mind ; 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 209 

lie exerted his will upon himself to advantage, and re- 
gained his serenity. Angelique Arnauld, the young 
abbess of Port-Royal, at fifteen is afflicted by fever, an 
illness which transforms the active girl into a mystic 
under the touch of "la Grace. " It is interesting to 
read that it needed a "fievre quarte" with a second 
' ' coup de la Grace ' ' to complete the work. Two mod- 
ern cases of converted Jews, A. de Ratisbonne and 
Paul Lowengard, mention delicate health; the latter 
adds a vicious and unwholesome life, and became a 
decadent poet while still a schoolboy. Nervous pros- 
tration accompanies his turn toward the Church. 
Mother 'Juliana of Norwich calls herself "a simple 
creature, living in deadlie flesh, whose pious wish it 
is, to have of God 's gift a bodilie sickness. ' ' Becom- 
ing a recluse, she is immediately gratified in this re- 
gard; fever, delirium, all miseries and heaviness, af- 
flicting her thereafter. Like many a convent-bred 
baby, M. M. Alacoque was a nun to all intents and pur- 
poses, at four years old. But her actual vows fol- 
lowed upon an illness from her tenth to her twelfth 
year. The gentle Carlo da Sezze was alarmed by a 
vision of death, vouchsafed him during a bad fever. 
He had no further visions until after he became a 
monk. Although Antoinette Bourignon was born 
* ' tres disgraciee de la nature, ' ' and displays some very 
odd characteristics, yet she never tells about her gen- 
eral health, other than to mention visions at the time of 
puberty. The nun Baptiste Varani was infirm for 
years. The apostle Paul notes many infirmities of 
body, and describes one attack of blindness. He al- 
ludes also to some chronic ailment which is not, how- 



210 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

ever, further defined. Amiel was certainly ill. Ober- 
mann (De Senancour) had nervous prostration. Jon- 
athan Edwards had an illness at college ''which 
brought me nigh to the grave and shook me over the 
pit of hell." The nun Jeanne des Anges was hys- 
terical from an early age: her autobiography de- 
scribes minutely an attack of a particular form of 
hysteria. Rulman Merswin so chastised his body 
"with sore and manifold exercises" that he be- 
came so weak he thought he would die. At times 
he feared for his reason, and fell into swoons from 
terror. Mechtilde observes with particularity her own 
constant state of ill-health and suffering from the stone. 
Fanny Pittar began as an active girl, but later under- 
went many severe attacks of sickness. Charles Simeon 
says, "I made myself quite ill" from religious worry, 
when at college. Joseph Lathrop is often infirm, but 
was aided by an outdoor life. Hurrell Froude was 
a youth when he contracted tuberculosis; fasting, 
worry, and general pious austerities, served to end his 
life while still young. Both William Plumer and N. 
S. Shaler started life as weakly children, but gained 
in strength and health after puberty. Their religious 
experiences passed through an emotional stage and 
terminated in a calm agnosticism. 

As a final commentary upon this group as a whole, 
the student is asked to observe the almost unvarying 
presence of an attack of illness preceding or during 
a conversion-period, even when the subject is other- 
wise healthy. In cases of continuous ill-health this 
attack may not be specifically mentioned. 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 211 

The cases of those religious confessants whose health 
has on the whole been good, are few, indeed, in com- 
parison with those we have just reviewed. Yet they 
are interesting and suggestive. Marie de l'lncarna- 
tion is a striking instance, for she writes emphatic- 
ally that she was ' ' never ill. ' ' John Wesley, that pow- 
erful engine, has been described as weak, yet he did 
the work of a strong man. He cannot really be classed 
among either group. Patrick of Ireland was vigor- 
ous; and Tolstoi, that modern mystic, had robust 
health. So had Rolle of Hampole; and Dame Ger- 
trude More was full of vitality and strength until the 
convent-life depressed her. Henry Ward Beecher had 
enlarged tonsils as a boy, and so was dull, but he had 
excellent health. Billy Bray, despite the drink, dis- 
played the high spirits and joyousness of a well per- 
son. Carre de Montgeron was strong and full of ar- 
dor for the life of the senses. Abelard appears to 
have started life in possession of an admirable con- 
stitution. Samuel Hopkins outgrew his fragility and 
became strong; while John Murray's naturally good 
health suffered only during a period of pious excite- 
ment. Rather by way of supplement than illustra- 
tion, may be added in this group the names of Sir 
Thomas Browne and of Frederic Harrison. The 
Quaker Gurneys of Earlham were a really remarka- 
ble example of a family whose emotional religious 
feeling is coincident with health, beauty, and strong 
physique, to say nothing of high spirits and intelli- 
gence. Among other confessants, Cardinal Newman 
seems to have had good health in the main ; as also did 
the Evangelist, C. G. Finney, whose conversion-phe- 



212 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

nomena were so striking. James Lackington, the book- 
seller, was a healthy person. John Livingstone could 
ride long distances without fatigue, and had many 
years of excellent health. Abuse of his powers, how- 
ever, had its effect in sundry illnesses. Among the 
Quakers, J. Woolman, though a cripple, was yet 
sturdy ; while John Wigham, Richard Davies, William 
Evans, and Thomas Shillitoe all showed a normal 
physique. The Methodists, William Capers and Rich- 
ard Rodda, differ from the majority of their co-reli- 
gionists in making mention of good health. And 
among others J. G. Paton, Oliver Hey wood, and Cal- 
vin himself, had excellent health and vigor. 

The confessants who exhibit definite abnormal or 
pathological characteristics, must needs be placed in 
a group apart, as it does not seem quite fair to classify 
and compare them with the rank and file. Helen Kel- 
ler's case, for instance, develops several facts of inter- 
est already mentioned in these pages. The religious 
education and growth of this most intelligent young 
woman took place under special conditions, and there- 
fore cannot with justice be compared with a similar 
development in those of us who speak, and see, and 
hear. 

There should also be classed apart those persons 
whose records exhibit signs of mental derangement 
in its various forms. John Dunton "was born so 
diminutive a creature that a quart-pot could contain 
the whole of me." Sickly and precocious as a child, 
abnormal as a youth, his record foreshadows in its 
matter and style the insanity of his later years. 
Count Lomenie de Brienne (fils) is a man who writes 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 213 

cheerfully of his pious feelings during lucid intervals. 
Isaac Williams's mind was clouded by a peculiar and 
obscure nervous malady, indicated in his record. 
Two rare Quaker tracts by John Pennyman and John 
Perrot, show their writers to have been unbalanced; 
the first by the execution of Charles I, whereat he fell 
into a melancholy. The second is mere religious 
raving, and is signed "From the prison of Madmen, 
in the City of Rome." Thomas Laythe is a Friend 
who fasted until his friends were alarmed at his al- 
tered countenance. David Hall, whose ill-health 
has been noticed, had an affection like the palsy, and 
ever displayed his pious zeal in a manner highly ex- 
travagant. The heredity of Joseph Smith, the Mor- 
mon, points to bad health on both sides. Students 
of his case suspect epilepsy ; there was certainly great 
weakness and exhaustion in his fifteenth year, just 
before his first vision. Toward the end of his life, 
such remarks as ' ' I know more than all the world put 
together; and God is my right-hand man!" savor of 
dementia. There is no doubt that he drank to excess 
and was otherwise vicious. Neither is there any 
doubt that he was a man of force and powerful 
physique. The cases of Crook and of Fox are yet 
more difficult to classify than that of Smith. Un- 
doubtedly the former suffered an attack of melan- 
cholia with suicidal impulses, but its extent and dura- 
tion are not easy to determine. Fox has been sus- 
pected of epilepsy; yet the truth in his case will be 
found hard to come by. There seems quite as much 
reason to suspect Swedenborg, of whom at least one 
convulsion is recorded. No one to-day can read the 



214 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

"Spiritual Diary, " without feeling a strong doubt 
as to the mental balance of the author. J. H. Lins- 
ley died insane; as also did F. Nietzsche and Pascal. 
The latter was entirely abnormal from childhood. 
Among Methodists, T. Payne, M. Joyce, and W. 
'Jackson indicate an unbalanced condition by their 
narrated extravagances. Jackson had had severe 
blows on the head as a child; his document displays 
a wandering style. Joanna Southcott had a marked 
case of religious mania complicated by dropsy, which 
she persisted in considering a divine pregnancy. 

John B. Gough 10 was a dipsomaniac, who struggled 
with his disease much as if it had been that personal 
demon which in truth it seemed to the "Monk of 
Evesham/ ' one thousand years before. Morbid fear 
is a similar demon to Andre de Lorde. George 
Miiller and Frederick Smith were vicious to the 
pathological extreme. The "De Profundis" of the 
gifted Oscar Wilde, with all its beauty and humility, 
cannot save its author from being charitably set 
among this group. A passion for sensationalism and 
for minor eccentricities is indicative of abnormality. 
It is shared by earlier, similar confessions, notably 
that of George Psalmanazar, 11 the impostor in the 
eighteenth century, and of W. H. Ireland, 12 the forger 
in the nineteenth. 

The mention of Wilde brings us without further 
delay to the whole question of the criminal confession 
and its psychology. This is a subject with which, as 
a whole, the criminologist alone can deal; and there- 
fore in this place it may be touched upon only in its 
relation to the religious confession. This relation is 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 215 

curious and often suggestive. The paucity of such 
serious documents as come within the limitations im- 
posed by this study, make it impossible to summon 
evidence enough to display this relation convincingly ; 
the best one can do is merely to point here and there 
to certain material of comparison. 

In the first place that extraordinary indifference 
and insensibility which is shown by the religious con- 
fessant toward his own pain and suffering, toward 
family ties and the claims of nature, is paralleled by 
the criminal confessant toward the subjects of his 
crime. Salimbene's indifference toward his aged 
father, Sainte-Chantal's toward her children, Gui- 
bert 's mother toward her son, is really the same indif- 
ference which is displayed toward his victim by the 
Indian Thug, 13 to whom murder is religious; or by 
Lagenaire, 14 who observes of himself that he never 
pitied suffering. Secondly, one would do well to con- 
sider the high degree of introspection which the crim- 
inal records possess. Lacenaire 's self -analysis is com- 
plete; so is that of Henri Charles, 15 the murderer 
of Mme. Gey at Sidi-Mabrouk ; and that of George 
Simon, 16 a youth who killed his mother in Pennsyl- 
vania. The introspective qualities of Eugene Aram 's 17 
narrative interested all England: in it he denies the 
guilt he afterwards confessed. The famous widow 
Lafarge 18 (Marie Cappelle), whose guilt or innocence 
is even to-day a matter of doubt, fills two volumes of 
memoirs with introspective matter that proves little 
except that she was a neurotic and hysterical person. 

Moreover, this degree of introspection is often ac- 
companied with mystical and religious phenomena. 



216 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Henri Charles, for instance, after a violent revolu- 
tion during puberty, had an upheaval from doubt, 
and then became extremely mystical, had visions, and 
loved the supernatural. Leave out the crime and 
there is much to connect this case with that of John 
Crook or John Bunyan. Mme. Lafarge and young 
Simon also appear to have had highly developed re- 
ligious sentiments. In fact, so mystical and intro- 
spective are criminals as a class, that a book has been 
recently compiled in France entirely from material 
furnished by themselves. 19 Unfortunately, this ma- 
terial is not sufficiently accredited for use in these 
pages. Nor is it required, if the reader will but bear 
the facts just suggested in his mind, when he comes 
to the later discussion of the causes of emotional re- 
ligious experience. 

But there is one important group of records in 
which the criminal and the religious impulses seem 
to walk actually hand-in-hand, in a way that to 
modern ideas seems incredibly hideous and strange. 
This group is that of the witchcraft confessions of 
the Middle Ages. Nothing serves to show more 
significantly how far our ideals have travelled from 
those of the past, than the feeling which these trials 
and confessions rouse in our minds to-day. Pity 
and horror and repulsion are terms all too weak for 
its . expression, when we see by this malady of the 
human mind such a man as Sir Matthew Hale brought 
down to the level of the African savage, screaming 
and dancing in the rites of Voodoo. 

Were it possible to obtain a series of the original 
confessions of those unfortunates tried for witchcraft 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 217 

during the Middle Ages, — a series extending through 
the centuries in almost unbroken sequence, — it would 
be easy to turn what is now matter of suggestion into 
matter of proof. Unfortunately, all influences have 
united to prevent these records from remaining in 
existence. The contagious character of this par- 
ticular form of hysteria (which the Church dimly 
recognized without knowing the explanation), the re- 
volting nature of the crimes confessed, and finally 
the arbitrary and often cruel decisions of the ec- 
clesiastical courts, have all contributed as causes to 
have these records altered, edited, or destroyed. 
Thus one reads of confessions having existed of which 
no trace remains. Even go early as 1694, the Church 
was making anxious efforts to destroy all testimonies 
of non-accredited mystics, or of religious impostors, 
or of heretics, or of persons accused of witchcraft. 20 
Among such records we read of the confession of 
Magdalena de la Cruz, an impostor who avowed her 
deceits, but was sentenced with leniency. 21 Dr. Lea 
gives a list of similar cases tried and punished by the 
Inquisition. A famous confession of sorcery is that 
of Jean de Vaux, 22 in 1598, in France; but no com- 
plete group of personal narratives belonging to this 
class is to be found until one reaches the witchcraft 
epidemic of the seventeenth century. 

The horror which these confessions of possession 
and devil-worship inspired among their contempo- 
raries, has hardly vanished on re-reading to-day, al- 
though it has shifted its ground. The judge presid- 
ing at the trial of the possessed nun, Marie de Sains 
(in 1613, at Yssel, in the Low Countries), declared 



218! EELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

that in all his sixty-five years he had never heard a 
more atrocious catalogue of crimes. But an ex- 
amination of the confession of Marie de Sains raises 
very different feelings to-day. The accused claims to 
have received the diabolical stigmata; and to have 
sacrificed "hundreds" of young infants at the Devil's 
call. Gorres points out that such acts were highly 
difficult for a cloistered nun to perform without dis- 
covery; and also that there was no evidence that so 
many children had disappeared in the neighbor- 
hood. 23 It is doubtful if the judges even took the 
trouble to verify her statements by sending to see if 
such and such children had really been murdered at 
all. 24 Here seems more likely a case of perversion 
and hysteria, with criminal inclinations. The accused 
from the first had shown an evil disposition, and had 
not taken the veil of her own choice. 

Stripped of all surrounding clouds of superstition, 
these cases furnish another witness to the sick nerves 
of the ancient world. The personal records of these 
hystericals fill us with that pity and horror which 
the healthy and sane feel for the sufferings of the 
unhealthy and the insane. Yet, when all is said, the 
spectacle presented by these court-rooms — the digni- 
fied judge stricken into horror by the ravings of 
mere vanity and hysteria — is a repulsive, even an 
indecent one. One is in the presence of a topsy- 
turvy, devil-ridden world, a world without logic, and 
smitten by superstition into an incoherency which 
deprives it of the power to reason. The nun Jeanne 
Fery, of Cambrai, 25 entreated to explain just how the 
Devil was to be worshipped, was listened to by learned 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 219 

and mature men while she recited the details of a 
ritual, puerile and disgusting rather than blasphemous. 
The Devil had told her to do exactly the opposite of 
what religion commanded : she was to stand when she 
had previously been taught to kneel, say the Lord's 
Prayer backward, spit upon the Host, and so on. 
The horror of her judges, the efforts of priests and 
exorcists, drove the poor creature to attempt suicide ; 
and thereafter, her mental disease progressing, she 
became melancholy and died an idiot. Even more 
pitiful was the figure of the nun Madeleine Bavent, 
of Louviers, because of her pathetic effort to explain 
and limit her own delusions. She insisted that she 
was by no means sure of the objective reality of what 
she had beheld at the Witches' Sabbat; using such 
phrases as ' ' if these things really occurred. ' ' 2S Men- 
tal distress (she had been seduced by her confessor) 
had been the cause of the first attack. In the same 
convent at Louviers, the contagion became widespread, 
and another sufferer, Marie de Saint Sacrement, has 
left a similar, written confession. 27 

Contemporaneously with the outbreak of epidemic 
hysteria at Louviers, a similar epidemic occurred at the 
convent of Loudun, which, by reason of its notoriety 
has provided us with much typical material for analy- 
sis. We have the complete history of the nine pos- 
sessed nuns at Loudun, whose ravings that he had be- 
witched them, sent to the stake their confessor, Urbain 
Grandier. Some years before (in 1610), the priest 
Louis Gauffridi had gone to his last account as 
the result of his infamous treatment of the twelve- 
year-old Magdalena de la Palude. The trial of 



220 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Gauffridi, so vividly recounted by Michelet, 28 does 
not, however, provide lis with the personal records 
necessary to the present study; whereas, at Loudun, 
there are extant, not only the full confessions of the 
Mere Jeanne des Anges, in whom the malady centred, 
but also those of her exorcizer and fellow-sufferer, Pere 
Surin. 29 The former autobiography has been edited 
by two French alienists, (with a preface by Charcot), 
who speak of its wealth of instructive detail; and 
who make entirely plain to the reader the cause and 
the progress of the writer's disease. 30 

The Mere Jeanne was not without strength of char- 
acter, although naturally morbid and predisposed to 
hysteria. She is forty at the time this document was 
composed, but she gives some account of her youth 
(in which she does not spare herself) and of her entry 
into the religious life. Although intelligent and fac- 
ile, she was vain and given to frivolity ; and she men- 
tions that from the age of fifteen her extravagances 
had worried her family. The vividness of her nar- 
rative — with its visions of lions and devils, the pell- 
mell of good and bad angels, the torment of unholy 
whispers in the night, those "desirs dereglees des 
choses deshonnestes," hold an intensity for us even 
when read in the light of our modern knowledge. 
Her director was the Pere Surin, called the unfortu- 
nate "Man of God"; a youth of fragile health and 
austere practices, who fell a ready victim to the con- 
tagion. By exorcism he drove from the poor woman, 
in a series of violent convulsions, several of the de- 
mons by whom she believed herself to be possessed. 
The worst devil of them all, who called himself Isa- 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 221 

caaron, now entered into the exorcizer, who had by this 
time become thoroughly unhinged. He in his turn 
began to have visions, torments, temptations, and con- 
vulsions, and these two unfortunates acted and reacted 
upon each other, to the point almost of frenzy. 

After several years the Mere Jeanne recovered. 
The priest remained in a condition of complete melan- 
cholia until but a short time before he died. While 
the excitement was at its height, the pair made a sort 
of pilgrimage, during which they spread the contagion 
of their hysteria far and wide, and they report that in 
every town they visited, certain of the more weakly- 
minded had hysterical attacks, or convulsions, or were 
possessed by devils. The evidence contained in the 
Mere Jeanne's confession, even without the comment 
and the diagnosis of the modern specialist, is seen to 
be full, conclusive, and complete, from its beginning 
in sporadic erotic hysteria, to its savage progress and 
its contagious development. 

The possession of the Mere Jeanne is of especial in- 
terest when we contrast its progress and development 
with similar conditions present in minds of a more 
robust calibre. Belief in devils and in their ability 
to attack and control human actions was, it must not 
be forgotten, by no means confined to the hysterical. It 
was, on the contrary, absolutely universal, the prop- 
erty alike of intellectual persons and of the truly and 
deeply religious. It was maintained by a judge like 
Sir Matthew Hale, by a lawyer like George Sinclar, by 
a mathematician like Cardan, and by a learned student 
like Meric Casaubon. 31 Luther, than whom no health- 
ier mind ever existed, held it fully. He attributed all 



222 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

thunderstorms to the direct agency of the Devil ; 32 
and he remarks that it was largely through fear of the 
Evil One that he became a monk. 33 Yet mark the 
situation, as depicted by his attitude and that of the 
"possedees ' ' just analyzed ! "On Good Friday last, ' ' 
remarks Luther, "I being in my chamber in fervent 
prayer . . . there suddenly appeared upon the wall a 
bright vision of our Saviour, with five wounds, stead- 
fastly looking upon me as if it had been Christ himself 
corporally. At first sight I thought it had been some 
celestial revelation, but I reflected that it must needs 
be an illusion and juggling of the Devil, for Christ 
appeared to me in his word in a humbler form, there- 
fore I spake to the vision thus — ' Avoid thee, con- 
founded Devil/ — whereupon the image vanished, 
clearly showing whence it came. ' ' 34 

A further anecdote, less well vouched for, is yet 
equally characteristic. "Another time in the night," 
writes Luther, ' ' I heard him above my cell walking on 
the cloister, hut as I knew it ivas the Devil, I paid no 
attention to him and went to sleep." However com- 
pletely Luther may have believed in that mediaeval gro- 
tesque, he had undoubtedly learned the one vital fact 
concerning him, namely, that he must be noticed in 
order to exist. To ignore the Devil, as Luther 
found, was to dispose of him altogether ; for so sensi- 
tive is the Prince of Darkness, that he was never able 
to stand a slight. In the attention paid him by such 
confessants as Marie de Sains, or the Mere Jeanne, or 
Suso, or Mme. Guyon, he thrived apace, as we 
have read ; but under such general contempt as Luther 
gave him, he could not have lived an hour. These 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 223 

old-wives ' tales should bring us more than a merely 
curious interest to-day, by teaching us that the vitality 
of all superstition lies wholly and solely in that mind 
by which it is infected — the will alone gives it life. 
Interesting is it also to see that what many of our 
mystical confessants would have accepted with rap- 
ture, as a visionary proof of heavenly favor, Luther 
considered an ignoble illusion and so dismissed it. 
Never was there a more complete manifestation of the 
subjective nature of these phenomena. 

When Jonathan Edwards 35 became the historian of 
what is known as the " Great Kevival" in New Eng- 
land, he described it as starting in 1735 from one small 
village, and thence spreading, "with fresh and ex- 
traordinary incomes of the Spirit," to the neighbor- 
ing communities. So plain and vivid is the evidence 
of religious contagion in Edwards's narrative, that it 
is well-nigh impossible to believe his powerful mind did 
not recognize the fact. Who knows how his views 
might have shifted had he been able to read, as have 
we, the confessions of the Mere Jeanne, or of the other 
"possedees" of Loudun or of Louviers? Yet even 
to-day, the presence and the power of this force re- 
main often undetermined. It has come to be under- 
stood in its extreme forms, where it is allied to hys- 
teria or other nervous disorder; but as a factor in 
more normal instances, it is too frequently neglected or 
obscured. 

Analysis of the religious revival and its attendant 
phenomena, belongs properly to a later section of this 
book, 86 where it will be found to bear an especial 
weight and significance. Its general data being his- 



224 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

torical and impersonal, it cannot be placed in juxta- 
position to the evidence furnished by the individual 
confessant. This evidence, furthermore, is not always 
easy to recognize. No one likes to think that the most 
sacred and moving influences in his life were the result 
of contagion; it is not an idea flattering to one's self- 
esteem. Therefore, he is apt to overlook such evi- 
dence to that effect as may exist, and to concentrate 
his attention, as we have seen the truly religious must, 
solely upon his individual phenomena. Even if the 
confessant acknowledges that the Holy Spirit is no- 
tably concerned with the welfare of a certain group of 
persons during a revival, yet he invariably believes 
that he himself is set apart to be an object of the 
Lord 's particular solicitude. He never seems, to him- 
self, to have fallen under the influence of direct con- 
tagion. 

Cases where the subject became a member of a re- 
ligious community during early childhood, indicate un- 
doubtedly their submission to the contagion of sur- 
rounding influences. Particularly noticeable are 
those whose original character and temperament were 
not specially predisposed to a religious life, such as 
Dame Gertrude More, Angelique Arnauld, Teresa of 
Avila, Hildegarde of Bingen, Mechtilde of Hackeborn, 
Gertrude of Eisleben, Jeanne de S. M. Deleloe, Gui- 
bert de Nogent, Peter Favre, among Catholics; and 
Edmund Gosse among Dissenters. Salimbene, as a 
boy of twelve, underwent the contagion of that thir- 
teenth-century revival known as the ' ' Great Alleluia, ' ' 
and no tears shed by his old father could keep him 
from the monastery. The evangelist, Peter Cart- 



THE DATA ANALYZED: I 225 

wright, precedes the account of his own conversion by 
a description of the wave of religious feeling which 
swept the community where he lived. He notes, dur- 
ing one revival meeting, an epidemic of "the jerks." 37 
These epidemics were especially influential upon the 
conversion of certain Mormon cases, such as Orson 
and Parley Pratt, and Benjamin Brown. 

Direct contagion is easily traceable in modern docu- 
ments. Peter Jones, an Indian brave, is stirred to 
unbecoming tears while attending a Methodist revival 
meeting. William Ashman had been unmoved for 
some years, until, when eleven years old, he attended a 
meeting along with many other children, during a sea- 
son of general revival. All are melted and changed. 
Similarly, John Pawson is moved much beyond his 
wont by the contagion of the group of worshippers, 
with whom he joins in meeting and prayer. Christo- 
pher Hopper, noting the clamor made about religion 
among his friends, observes, "I made my bustle with 
the rest." He went to hear Wesley and Reeves, and 
was generally roused by the prevalent zeal to see the 
light and to preach. E. N. Kirk is worried because 
he seems to himself so little touched by a revival at 
Princeton, when he is seventeen. But he is so far 
affected as to take the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress 
and retire to his room, determined (on the advice of a 
pious friend) never to leave it, "save as a Chris- 
tian or a corpse." In the same way, during a re- 
vival at Yale, does Gardiner Spring "wrestle with 
God." Camp-meeting contagion moves to swoon- 
ing the frail and tuberculous Joseph Thomas. The 
modern student of religious psychology has come 



226 KELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

more and more to take into account that important law 
which LeBon defines as ' ' the mental unity of crowds. ' ' 
So recent a writer as Dr. Cutten 38 is careful to note 
the contagious nature of all emotional states; and in 
particular those of mysticism and of ecstasy. 

When the procurable facts concerning the confes- 
sants' health, education, and heredity have been gath- 
ered together, it must be surely less difficult to eluci- 
date his feelings on the subject of his religion. r Just 
as the physician, ere he completes his examination, 
must needs inform himself of the patient's general 
health, habits, and history before the attack, so have 
we endeavored to inform ourselves. The advantage of 
this method (however tedious it may seem) lies in 
our ability to take hold of the mystical data by 
the proper end. No longer do these facts seem 
isolated or peculiar, but rather do they fit into 
a scheme of general history, and become component 
parts possessing a definite individuality. Thus we do 
not examine merely the visions of Loyola or Teresa, 
but also such facts in the history of these two persons 
as exist coincident with, and commenting upon, their 
mysticism. Not only is the conversion of Bunyan or 
Augustin made the subject of our study, but the causes 
leading to it, and the character which evolved it. The 
religious ideas of Swedenborg have much less sig- 
nificance alone than when they are taken in relation to 
his family history, education, and physical condition. 
Thus, the facts which are to follow, and in which these 
confessants believe lie their chief message and main 
value, cease to be bizarre and capricious phenomena, 
but instead become a part of the coherent miracle of 
human nature and human imagination. 



VI 

THE DATA ANALYZED: II 



I. Early piety. 
II. Late piety. 

III. Conversion. 

(a) Methods. 

(b) Depression. 

IV. The unpardonable sin. 



VI 

THE DATA ANALYZED: II 

The confessants in whom piety was strongly marked 
in childhood are greatly in the majority; and there 
is no part of their records so interesting as that which 
tells of the sprouting of this seed. Those who under- 
went a subsequent relapse into indifference, are apt to 
point to these earlier inclinations as to the first mani- 
festations of Grace. Others take them merely as proof 
of divine heritage ; while there are some in whom the 
religious feeling progresses without break or reaction, 
from infantile emotion to mature devotion. 

The attitude of certain cases toward their own child- 
ish sentiments is suggestive. Though Richard Baxter 
told lies and stole apples, yet, when "a little Boy in 
Coats," if he heard any one among his playmates use 
profane words, he would rebuke him. At seven, 
Thomas Boston was taking the Bible to bed with him ; 
although he thinks this was done largely out of a spirit 
of curiosity. "I was of a sober and harmless deport- 
ment, ' ' he adds ; ' ' at no time vicious or roguish. ' ' He 
was a good-sized child when he set "to pray in ear- 
nest.' ' It is interesting to read that his little son 
Thomas (cet. seven) "was found sensible of the stir- 
rings of corruption in his heart," and had to be prayed 
over and wrestled with by his parents, in the manner 

229 



230 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of those days. The entire family of the Gurneys of 
Earlham were religious self-analysts from infancy. 
At eleven, Louisa writes in her journal : ' ' I had a cloud 
over me. ... I am determined to be religious." 
Bishop Joseph Hall was deeply fervent as a tiny child. 
Hildegarde of Bingen, who saw a great light at three, 
offered herself to God at eight and took the vows. 
J. H. Newman took a childish delight in his Bible, 
though he had no formed convictions before he was fif- 
teen. He had a firm belief in angels and in demons. His 
brother Francis began secret prayer at eleven years 
old. The gently pious Henry Alline "was very early 
moved upon by the spirit of God," and at eight grew 
terribly distressed about hell. Emanuel Swedenborg 
we know to have been middle-aged ere he became really 
concerned with the subject of religion ; yet he remarks 
that from four to ten years his mind was engrossed with 
thoughts of God and salvation. John Eudes was early 
pious and became a novice at fourteen. J. de la Fon- 
taine summoned his family to prayer at four. Augus- 
tin makes few comments on his infant piety, though 
many on his infant wickedness. ' ' So small a boy, so 
great a sinner ! ' ' is his cry. But he avows that on fall- 
ing seriously ill, he asked for baptism. At five or six 
years old, Bellarmin preached on Jesus' suffering. 
Annie Besant, whose shifts of creed are interesting, 
notes of her childhood: "I was the stuff of which 
fanatics are made, religious to the very finger-tips 
... I fasted and occasionally flagellated myself." 
Jeanne de St. M. Deleloe loved, when a baby, to play 
the nun. The picture of Robert Blair's ardent child- 
ish feeling has already been dwelt upon in another 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 231 

book. 1 It is one of much beauty and pathos. At six, 
1 ' the Lord awed me and began to catechize me"; and 
after an early religious crisis, he further says: "I 
durst never play upon the Lord's day." Charles 
Bray, the friend of George Eliot, turned early toward 
religion. However, his conversion was followed by 
a reaction which terminated in agnosticism. Says 
Thomas Chalkley : ' ' Between eight and ten, the Lord 
began to work strongly on my mind, insomuch that 
I could not forbear reproving those lads who would 
take the name of God in their mouths in vain. ' ' Ste- 
phen Crisp, at nine or ten, ' ' sought the power of God 
with great diligence and earnestness, with strong cries 
and tears." He worried much over "the lost state" 
of his playmates, and went to sermons as other chil- 
dren to sports and pastime. He was only twelve, when, 
in secret fields and unusual places, he poured out his 
complaints to the Lord. 'John Crook describes a sim- 
ilar state. "I had many exercises in my inward 
man," he writes of himself at ten or eleven, "and 
often prayed in bye-corners. . . . Strong combatings 
remained within me, which continued haunting of me 
many months. " "In my very young years, ' ' George 
Fox beautifully writes, "I had a gravity and stayed- 
ness of mind and spirit not usual in children . . . 
when I came to eleven years of age I knew pureness 
and righteousness." He adds, with unusual candour 
in a person anxious to represent himself as a miser- 
able sinner: "People had generally a love to me for 
my innocency and honesty. ' ' Edmund Gosse 's history 
of a father and son gives an extraordinarily vivid and 
telling picture of exaggerated childish piety. He 



232 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

is baptized a Plymouth Brother at ten, and during all 
his earlier years is wholly occupied with religious 
excitement. The after development of this case is 
toward free-thought. The abbot Guibert de Nogent 
inherited religious tendencies to mysticism ; and is only 
eleven when he enters a monastery, full of remorse 
for his sins. Horrible dreams and visions of despair 
beset his youth thereafter, in the mediaeval manner. 
Jeanne de la Mothe-Guyon was put in a convent at 
two and a half years. It seems more childish than 
pious that she loved ' ' to hear of God, to be at Church, 
and drest in the habit of a little nun." The piety 
soon developed into an overcharged infantile fervor; 
she confessed at four, and loved, like Teresa, to play 
at martyrdom. Her devotion steadily progresses in 
fanaticism : at fifteen, she depicts herself as persecuted 
by every one for her zeal. This atmosphere of re- 
ligious overstrain in childhood brings frequently a 
violent relapse long ere conversion : so it did to A. J. C. 
Hare. The Friends were almost without exception 
infant zealots, and none more so than Joseph Hoag. 
"Very early in life I was favored with Divine visita- 
tions, ' ' he writes, and from nine to twelve, * ' I had many 
clear openings." Another Quaker, Francis Howgill, 
from twelve read and meditated, decided that all sports 
and pastimes are vain, tried to convert his boy com- 
rades. Lutfullah, the Mohammedan, knew his Koran 
at six, and by seven he was respected by all as 
a little priest. The mind of Dr. Henry More, when he 
went to Eton at thirteen, was preoccupied with specu- 
lations about hell and God. St. Patrick was a herd- 
boy in the fields when God's voice called him. Bishop 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 233 

Symon Patrick's account of his childish "godly prin- 
ciples " is naif. "I had an early sense of religion 
(blessed be God) imprinted on my mind, which was 
much increased by my attending to sermons. . . . Hear- 
ing a rigid sermon about reprobation of the greatest 
part of mankind, I remember well that when I was a 
little boy, I resolved if that were true I would never 
marry because most, if not all, my children might be 
damned. " "Other deliverances I had in my very 
young years," he says, on recovering from an illness 
at twelve. Jane Pearson had a "godly sorrow" as 
a child, with deep sense of privation and emptiness. 
Walter Pringle prayed very early, acknowledging the 
Lord in lessons and in play. Salimbene's conversion 
was at twelve, but he gives no coherent account of 
his piety in childhood. M. A. Schimmelpenninck con- 
nects her early outbursts of fervent feeling with the 
state of her health. The Lord worked very early in 
Job Scott's heart; in meeting he had "serious impres- 
sions and contemplations"; also the heart of Oliver 
Sansom was similarly ' ' broken and tendered. ' ' Inward 
fear so agitated Elizabeth Stirredge before she was ten, 
that she took no delight in the things of this world. 
H. Suso gives no details of his childhood, save that its 
piety was joyous. It is mostly from others that we 
have the charming stories of Teresa's childhood, and 
know that she early turned her eyes to divine things. 
Anna van Schurman was four when she was penetrated 
with joy at the religious instructions of her nurse. 
But her interests were chiefly intellectual and artistic 
until later. Isaac Williams in childhood was much 
affected by the transitory nature of things. Sentences 



234 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of Sherlock "On Death' ' haunted him like strains of 
music. Gentle John Woolman was troubled by the ill 
language of boy friends, and says: "Before I was 
seven, I began to be acquainted with the operations of 
Divine love." He is so tender of heart that when he 
killed a robin it marked an epoch in his life. Patrick 
Livingstone "was frightened out of sleep," and, like 
Charles Marshall, notes that he abhorred sin and loved 
godliness "at a very tender age." Edith Jefferis 
wept and was tendered in meeting at the age of six. 
Thomas Wilson and Mary Alexander showed piety 
when still extremely young; the last was "visited 
with the heart-tendering power of the Lord." 

John Conran's first religious experience is as 
instructive as Eobert Blair's with the milk-posset. 
"At thirteen," he writes, "in company with some 
of my school-fellows, I drank some sweet liquor 
. . . which overcame me. After I was in bed I felt 
close convictions take hold of me and make me sor- 
rowful. These were . . . succeeded by great terrors 
of death. This dispensation lasted about fifteen min- 
utes." These two cases form a suggestive instance 
of the way in which the pietist tends to look to 
metaphysical causes for the explanation of his facts, 
instead of to the physical causes. The readiness 
to do this is carried far beyond the mere effects of 
milk-punch or shrub, and accounts for many inter- 
esting statements of "misinterpreted observation." 
The Quaker John Churchman was overcome and ten- 
dered in meeting at eight years old; and at the same 
age Catherine Phillips was completely overwhelmed 
with her sense of guilt and sin toward the Holy 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 235 

Ghost. Books on martyrs frightened this poor child 
terribly. In the same way was John Griffith fa- 
vored with ' * heart-searching visitations of God's 
love," and remembered the effect on ''my tender, weak 
mind." Mildred Ratcliff, at nine, had a dreadful 
dream of the Adversary to upset her nerves. Al- 
though Stephen Grellet had no instruction, yet he 
early showed his religious inclinations. The same 
piety, at the age of six to eight, is noted by John Wig- 
ham, Joseph Pike, Mary Dudley, S. Tucker, D. Stan- 
ton, Mary Hagger, and Anna Braithwaite, who con- 
sidered meeting a privilege. At six, Henry Hull 
thinks his religious views were imperfect, though he 
was much impressed at meeting; and George Bewley 
was "sensible of inward reproof and sorrow," when 
he played too long. Ann Crowley, while yet young in 
years, remembered seasons of humiliation; and God 
visits John Gratton when he is a shepherd, and 
bids him leave his play with rude boy comrades. Sam- 
uel Neale wept and was tendered at a very early age, 
and all his childhood was grave and sedate. Thomas 
Story early inclined toward solitude and pious medi- 
tations. Ambrose Rigge was ten or twelve when his 
heart was touched "with a sense of my latter end." 
John Fothergill loved meeting when a little boy, until 
he took "a worldly turn." 

Since information on this subject is, of course, the 
starting-point of almost every confessant, it neces- 
sarily follows that our data should be very abundant. 
To pass and re-pass it as we have done, may have the 
disadvantage of tediousness, but it is quite essential to 
its proper understanding. Only when a typical char- 



2S6 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

acteristic can be as well understood by ten examples 
as by a hundred, are we warranted in making any 
selection; but where our study is of a condition, we 
are obliged to examine all of its component parts, 
that the charge of picking and choosing what is most 
representative or best fitted to our purpose may not 
be brought against us. On the question of childish 
piety, the Quakers, as we see, have furnished us with 
an enormous number of examples; it being in their 
opinion the especial manifestation of God's grace to 
that sect, that they should be as so many infant Sam- 
uels. These are in nowise so numerous among the 
Methodist and Congregational cases, who, on the con- 
trary, are rather more apt to record sudden and un- 
foreseen religious manifestations. Still, they are to 
be found if we look. A sense of death and judgment 
with other awful feelings, oppressed David Marks at 
four ; and likewise, Luther Eice was a fervent and dis- 
tressed infant. ' ' From earliest days the Lord worked 
powerfully " on the mind of Thomas Lee. Richard 
Eodda was four when he felt the stirrings of grace, 
while to William Hunter these seemed the " sweet 
drawings of love." By Thomas Payne, the stirrings 
of God's love were noticed long ere ten, when he wished 
to be truly religious. " Awful thoughts of God" and 
"strong convictions" came during their infancy both 
to Peter Jaco and to Thomas Mitchell. Bird's-nesting 
on a Sunday brought an intense remorse to Joseph 
Travis, which started him in the way of religious 
thoughts. Lorenzo Dow describes a very typical child- 
ish state when he says that at three or four he fell into 
a muse about God, and asked about heaven and hell. 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 237 

By ten years old he had begun to worry about death. 
Nor are we surprised to hear from John Allen that 
his serious thoughts, in childhood, were produced dur- 
ing thunderstorms or from hearing the passing-bell. 
Deeply serious children were Richard Whateoat, 
George Shadford, George Story, and James Rogers. 
This last — poor baby ! — at three, ' 'on hearing a passing- 
bell or seeing a corpse [ !] ... became very thought- 
ful and asked pertinent questions about my future 
state. ' ' Both M. Joyce and John Furz chiefly enlarge 
upon the terrible consequences of their intense, child- 
ish fear. From six to fourteen, John Pritchard could 
weep and pray by the hour together, while at the same 
age William Black was troubled with the idea of his 
sinfulness. William Ashman, a child, heard Wesley 
preach and thought the end of the world was at hand. 
The Lord strove with him from four to five, but he 
was eleven before he was melted. One Sunday, hear- 
ing Revelations read, the boy John Nelson nearly had 
convulsions from terror. Mary Fletcher was wholly 
concerned with religious ideas from her earliest years, 
and at four, her mind was occupied with her eternal 
welfare. At the age of three to four, Peard Dickinson 
"was drawn out in prayer/' Terror, as in so many 
cases, is the dominant thought of Joshua Marsden's 
infancy; while to William Neill, whose parents were 
American pioneers, fear of the Indian and of the 
Devil was synonymous. (This last case, it should be 
noted, however, does not state that this terror de- 
noted any early religious stirrings.) Jotham Sewall, 
from three to six, is most interested in pious subjects. 
While playing in the fields, William Wilson was 



%38 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

brought into a strange amazement and asked: "How 
came I here; who made me?" This was followed 
' ' by an inward sense of sin, and he did pray much. ' ' 
«James Melvill at eight to nine did pray and rebuke 
the profane. Oliver Taylor remembered how at six to 
seven ' 'my thoughts were much on God, and my soul. ' ' 
No one can forget that Sainte-Chantal, an infant, 
would not be caressed by a heretic without weeping, 
while at five, she rebuked a doubter. J. J. Olier was 
a pious and studious boy, who loved the Virgin Mary. 
There was never a conscious moment when M. M. 
Alacoque was not pious. Sin early horrified her, and 
she vowed herself to chastity long ere she knew the 
meaning of the word. From her fourth year, she 
dwelt in a constant condition of religious fervor and 
excitement. Antoinette Bourignon, at four, expressed 
a wish to live "where all were good Christians," and 
was therefore mocked by her parents. Marie de l'ln- 
carnation used to kiss the priest's garments as he 
passed along the street. She took much delight in 
repeating the name of Jesus. Othloh prayed to the 
Lord that he might escape the rod at school. Fanny 
Pittar was a fervent child; while Paul Lowen- 
gard, a sensitive and religious boy in a materialist 
family, suffered tortures of misunderstanding. Cath- 
erine of Siena we know to have been a little saint at 
six; and indeed, in the Middle Ages, the spontaneous 
bloom of piety in early childhood filled many a convent 
and determined the career of many a great mystic. 
Sister Therese, Carmelite, discussed matters of faith 
at three ; her games were all taken from religion. She 
suffered intensely from scruples at thirteen, was a nun 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 239 

at eighteen, and lived on this sinful earth but a few 
years thereafter. Mary of the Angels was only eight 
when she wept because she might not take the Eucha- 
rist; and she became a Carmelite at fifteen. Osanna 
Andreasi avows that Jesus appeared to her when she 
was six, in the guise of a charming playfellow. A. C. 
Emmerich was five or six when she had her first vision. 
Peter Favre, at seven, experienced periods of devo- 
tion, and at ten, longed for instruction. Jonathan 
Edwards writes: "I had a variety of concerns and 
exercises about my soul from my childhood . . . with 
. . . two remarkable seasons of awakening. ... I used 
to pray five times a day in secret and spend much 
time in religious talk with the other boys. ' ' He adds : 
"I seemed in my element when engaged in religious 
duties. ' ' 

Fraulein von Meysenbug was a devout child. The 
prophetess Joanna Southcott early grew in grace and 
fear of the Lord. At nine, John Trevor was very 
religious, very unsettled, very much afraid. The 
Moravians mentioned by "Wesley were all in early 
childhood troubled and anxious about their souls. 
Henry Ward Beecher, though a good boy, fancied him- 
self a great sinner ; while the liquor question added to 
the religious anxieties of Granville Moody until he 
made a covenant with God. Jacob Knapp's mind 
"was early impressed with divine truth.'' He had 
seasons of prayer, and his mother 's death when he was 
seventeen, was the final influence toward the ministry. 
F. Schleiermacher was very young when he worried 
about his soul, which gave him sleepless nights. This 
is followed at fourteen by a sceptical reaction. In the 



240 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

case of William Plumer, 2 both the first feeling and 
the reaction therefrom are so intense as to cause a 
loathing of the subject for the rest of life. Gardiner 
Spring writes that he was a selfish and a wilful boy, 
yet not without serious impressions. His conscience 
was tender and he had seasons of depression. At ten 
he was deeply moved by a sister's death, though he re- 
lapsed afterwards. The Mormon Prophet Joseph 
Smith had no more childish piety than was aroused by 
an intense fear of the Indians. He is fourteen when 
he first had "serious reflections" during a time of re- 
ligious excitement; but he held himself aloof from all 
parties. He inherited this independence of thought in 
regard to sect from his father and grandfather. 

In contrast to the foregoing choir of infant angels, 
is a group of deeply moved persons whose sensitive- 
ness to religion was but tardily awakened or not felt at 
all until the actual moment of conversion. Some of 
them are as striking as Loyola, whose own words de- 
clare that "until his twenty-sixth year he was given 
up to the vanities of this world ' ' ; and in this sentence 
he dismisses his unconverted youth. We know that 
John Wesley, serious and scholarly youth though he 
was, gave few signs of religious intensity of feeling 
before manhood. The same seems to have been the 
case with Swedenborg. Thomas Haliburton goes so 
far as to observe that he spent his first ten years with- 
out one rational thought! Bunyan "had few equals 
for cursing and lying." Though often terrified by 
fear of hell, yet real religious sentiment was lacking 
to his childhood. Whitefield's self-denunciation is 
even more violent : "I was fro ward from my mother 's 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 241 

womb. ... If I trace myself from my cradle to my 
manhood I can see nothing in me but a fitness to be 
damned." At the same time, he imitated a preacher 
so well that at ten years old his talent for the pul- 
pit was recognized. John Livingstone, the Scots 
preacher, was of a slow development in regard to the 
religious instinct, which lay dormant during col- 
lege life, but gradually came to supersede his other 
interests. He never had a conversion, and was al- 
ways an unemotional example. John Newton is so 
much impressed with his own wickedness that we are 
not surprised when he avows no serious feelings at 
all, till his change of heart as a young man. In much 
the same key, a more noteworthy man, Tolstoi, dwells 
rather on his youthful scepticism, and on the awaken- 
ing of the sexual instinct, than upon any childish 
religious ideas. His disgust with himself begins very 
soon: "Jeme degoutai des hommes, je me degoutai de 
moi-meme ' ' ; and his piety is wholly an adult growth, 
passing through many crises ere he discovers that "la 
foi, c'est la force de la vie." Another Scot, James 
Fraser of Brae, says of his childhood: "My disposi- 
tion was sullen and I loved not to be dawted . . . nor 
had I any wise tales like other children. . . . My 
temper was so peevish that I was no dawty," he in- 
sists ; ' ' only at school I learned well. ' ' He paints his 
sins in dark colors, and cannot seem to recall any 
childish piety. The only sentiment that Elizabeth 
Ashbridge can remember was "an awful regard for 
religion and religious people." The subject did not 
interest her for a long time, for she grew up "wild and 
airy." Count Schouvaloff, who turned Catholic, 



242 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

owns that he was sceptical and revolutionary as a boy 
at school. 

Although so many of our Quaker cases have been 
already mentioned upon other counts, yet there are a 
number who could look back to no saintly infancy. 
Such was Samuel Bownas, who until thirteen "had no 
taste of religion." Such also were Daniel Wheeler, 
Richard Davies, Richard Jordan, William Lewis (who 
was frivolous and read plays and novels), and William 
Evans, who as a child was "carnally inclined" and 
"found the society of religious people irksome." 
Whitefield's preaching roused the feelings of Joseph 
Oxley, who until then had had no pious inclinations 
whatever, and had stolen money from a servant. Very 
dreadful was the childhood of Frederick Smith, who 
at school became "a little monster of iniquity"; by 
nine years old knew every childish evil and never had 
had a serious impression. Few excelled him in vicious 
conduct from his fourteenth year till his conversion. 
Thomas Shillitoe's mind was unawakened till his six- 
teenth year ; and till the same age, Jane Hoskins was far 
too cheerful and too fond of music and dancing ; while 
Alexander Jaffray thinks he spent far too much time 
"in vanity and looseness." Among the Baptists, 
George Miiller, Elias Smith, and J. H. Linsley can 
look back upon no serious religious inclinations dur- 
ing their childhood. In the Methodist group, the 
number who knew no piety until their conversion is 
large. It includes the names of John Prickard, John 
Pawson, Sampson Staniforth (who "hated religion" 
till nearly fourteen), and Thomas Olivers, who ac- 
knowledges that he practised when a boy to excel in 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 243 

swearing, and was scarcely grown when lie had a se- 
duction on his conscience. Him also the thunders of 
Whitefield first stirred to a sense of guilt. William 
Capers was first moved at a camp-meeting, before 
which time he had no religious stirrings. Daniel 
Young, Duncan Wright, and Thomas Rankin, were in- 
different as children. John Haime was a vicious 
youth, who cursed and lied, and was most miserable; 
while Thomas Walsh felt a marked indifference to re- 
ligion, and, at eight, preferred his play and silly pleas- 
ures. Two further Methodist cases are those of John 
Murlin who, before the age of twenty, was an enemy 
to God and his soul ; and Richard Williams, a surgeon, 
quite indifferent to religious matters until an illness 
with delirium so alarmed him as to precipitate a 
conversion. 

Quaint Oliver Heywood describes how as a child he 
was ' ' backward to good exercises and forward to sinful 
practices." E. N. Kirk is insensible to pious feelings 
all through childhood, and even through a revival at 
college so late as his eighteenth year. His was an un- 
emotional nature. J. A. James notes "no decided re- 
ligious feelings ' ' either during boyhood or schooldays. 
Joseph Thomas felt no childish piety ; and T. R, Gates, 
although his infant conscience remained serene, yet 
took no delight in prayer. 

It is interesting to find that what the eighteenth cen- 
tury looked at askance as the domination of the old 
Adam, the nineteenth century calls ' ' a normal childish 
indifference" to the subject! True it is that the line 
of the norm changes visibly from decade to decade. 
Orville Dewey notes this indifference until his college 



244 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

years ; while C. S. Spurgeon thinks that a similar lack 
in himself is due to a wicked neglect. He feels much 
safer when, as a youth, he had nothing before his 
eyes but his own guilt and came even to blasphemy and 
doubt. Billy Bray and Jerry McAuley, criminals 
and drunkards, can recall no uplifted feelings during 
their miserable and neglected childhood. Charles 
Simeon laments his irreligious boyhood. Thomas Scott 
took no interest in his own soul till sixteen, and then 
was moved chiefly through fear. Carre de Montgeron 
was a boy over-indulged and given to sensual pleasures. 
It took a carriage accident to alarm him as to his 
course. 

The difficulty has already been noted of obtaining 
data from any mediaeval cases, on such a point. They 
are apt to remain silent on all matters which appear 
trivial to them. Gertrude of Eisleben does remark 
that she was in her twenty-sixth year when the light 
came to her. Placed in a convent at five, however, she 
must have early submitted to the influence of her sur- 
roundings. Certainly Gertrude More, that merry, en- 
ergetic, high-spirited, and what her director terms 
' ' extroverted, ' ' nature, was not early turned to spirit- 
ual matters, and found her convent yoke very grievous 
and intolerable. Sir Tobie Matthew was twenty- 
seven and on a trip to Italy when his interest in 
religion was roused, and he was led to Catholi- 
cism. Rulman Merswin, one of the Gottesfreunde, was 
a mature banker, whose childlessness caused him to 
turn his thoughts toward heaven. Rolle of Hampole 
writes that his youth was "fond and carnal — my 
young age unclean." D. Jarratt, H. Martyn, and 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 245 

J. Lathrop awakened late to any marked religious 
feelings. 

One or two cases remain to be mentioned of a type 
which, strictly speaking, lies outside of these forego- 
ing examples. Helen Keller, for instance, shows that, 
with her, curiosity preceded the awakening of any 
special religious instinct. At ten, she asks who made 
her, where she came from, and why. Reverence is 
aroused much later. It is unfortunate that we have 
not similar cases to compare with this one, in order 
that we might see whether the deprivation of certain 
senses tends to deprive one also of those supposedly 
innate sentiments of reverence and love. 

The philosopher Nietzsche should not be omitted, 
since he notes an almost unique condition. "Of ac- 
tual religious difficulties, ' ' he asserts, "I have no ex- 
perience, I have never known what it was to feel sin- 
ful.' ' A less paradoxical nature, N. S. Shaler, is 
equally consistent, in that as a child he was never 
religious and after twelve he turned away from the 
whole subject. Hudson-Taylor was quite indiffer- 
ent as a youth; and describes his sitting to read 
a certain tract "in an utterly unconcerned state of 
mind." The great rarity of these last two types is 
our excuse for mentioning them. 

Long ere this, the student will have been satisfied 
that the characteristics leading toward the religious 
life tend to show themselves in the subject at an early 
age. Whether these be indicated by a heightened ca- 
pacity for childish fervor, or an intensified suscepti- 
bility to childish terrors, they denote the presence in 



246 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

that personality, of a peculiar sensitiveness. A few 
cases 3 have just been observed of a total aversion to 
religion in persons afterwards deeply religious, but 
they are so few as merely to accentuate the rule. 

A sensitiveness to, and interest in, religious affairs, 
indicates to the subject himself that something stirs 
within his heart and imagination which is not shared 
by the generality of his companions. Once he ob- 
serves this, and in his own opinion sets himself apart 
from others, he places himself immediately in a mental 
and an emotional isolation which allows a free play 
to all the succeeding phenomena. Thus freed from 
counteractions and retarding influences, the reli- 
gious process develops rapidly, and consistently with 
those elements which are present in the nature of 
the person affected. Taken in conjunction with the 
foregoing data of health, heredity, and education, the 
persistency and the significance of this process begin 
to assume a definite character and a typical evolution. 
Step by step, the reader may follow this evolution by 
means of the facts and experiences furnished by the 
subjects themselves. He has already seen them as chil- 
dren, watched the shifts and turns of spiritual growth, 
the effect of education, the contagion of meetings and 
revivals. He is thus prepared to approach the intri- 
cate subject of Conversion. 

The psychologists, who have recently begun to deal 
with the phenomena of the religious life, have devoted 
much space to that crisis known as conversion. 
They tend, not unnaturally, to treat it as an isolated 
moment in the history of the person, while many of 
them give but little space to the conditions preceding 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 247 

and following it. The result is to force a wrong 
perspective on the reader, in his ideas of the rise and 
progress of this emotional crisis ; which error has been 
increased by the use chiefly of the more typical and 
well-marked cases, many of whom — such as Paul, Au- 
gustin, or Fox — were distinguished by the gift of lit- 
erary power. 

There have not been wanting protests against this 
method. Dr. Watson disagrees with Professor James 
on this very matter ; 4 since the author of the ' ' Va- 
rieties of Religious Experience" relies wholly on 
the mystical type and on the individual expression. 
"We cannot get any fruitful results," says Dr. 
Watson, "by simply describing the experience of this 
or that individual in its isolation. To interpret the 
experience of the individual, we have to consider the 
spiritual medium in which he lives, and the stage in 
the progress as a whole, which he represents. For 
experience is essentially a process. ' ' 5 

Valuable words these, which this study must neces- 
sarily confirm, by insisting on the relation of the 
individual-experience to the group-experience, in all 
matters which come under the influence of the 
law of crowds. 6 For this reason, if for no other, so 
much of this work has been occupied with brief ab- 
stracts of the cases studied, in order that the reader 
may relate the conversion-phenomena of Fox to the 
Quaker group in general; that he may examine not 
Teresa alone, but the group of convent mystics; not 
Wesley alone, but the group of Methodists. The com- 
mon characteristics of these groups will then become 
plain, together with the "spiritual medium" of each' 



248 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

case, and "the stage in the progress as a whole which 
he represents. ' ' 

That religious experience is a process, must be stead- 
fastly borne in mind in our contemplation of this 
body of facts. For how is it possible to study conver- 
sion, unless one has immediately before him all the 
facts concerning the converted ; all that goes to make 
up what M. Anatole France has called "la verite hu- 
maine ' ' ? Our purpose, indeed, lies embedded in these 
data. Not in theorizing as to what Teresa thought, 
nor what Augustin reasoned, nor what Maria d'Agreda 
imagined, will the truth be found to lie, but in trying 
to collate and to interpret the facts they tell us. 

That we to-day have heightened the meaning of the 
term "conversion" and have attached emotional sig- 
nificance to it, no reader of the ancient records can 
doubt. In one of his dialogues Caesarius of Heister- 
bach 7 (1225 a.d.) discusses the causes of conversion 
or leaving the world for the cloister, in a manner 
which shows that it held for him but the physical sense 
of "a turning-about. ' ' One was turned or converted 
to the monastic life, for all sorts of reasons wholly un- 
connected with religious emotion. To-day, the word 
seems to mean more nearly what the Southern negro 
calls "getting 'ligion"; for, beside the turning-away 
from the past, the soul of the converted person is sup- 
posed to be charged with a fresh and ardent energy 
for the future. 

The common identity of the various mystical types 
has been sufficiently insisted upon in these pages. 
Therefore the grouping of our facts is not, as it may 
casually appear, capricious or fortuitous. It has 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 249 

seemed more nearly accurate to classify them according 
to the character of the phenomena displayed, and to 
ignore for the moment a divergence of era or of race. 
Dr. Pratt 8 uses the classification "normal" and "ab- 
normal," meaning by the first term that spontaneous 
union with a higher life which is gradually achieved 
and which endures; by the second, that sudden and 
mystical change which most of us know as conver- 
sion. 

But, as has already been indicated, a special diffi- 
culty attaches to the terms ' ' normal ' ' and ' ' abnormal ' ' 
in this application. They are too shifting, and in the 
light of the facts even contradictory. Those religious 
experiences which are normal to the Guinea negro, 
would be highly abnormal to the Englishman of to- 
day. The standard, in fact, fluctuates even from 
group to group. For instance, if out of ninety 
Quaker cases less than twenty belong to Dr. Pratt's 
so-called normal or unemotional class, we are driven to 
the inference either that the whole Quaker movement 
was abnormal, which is false, or that the normal line 
has in this particular sect shifted to the mystical 
side. In truth, the idea that the normal is the 
self-contained, unemotional, yet serious, elevated, 
and ethical type — an idea so flattering to the 
Anglo-Saxon — will not stand the test of investi- 
gation. At no time in the world's history has 
the deep and quiet nature, coming gradually into 
union with the divine idea, been other than exceed- 
ingly rare. For such a condition presupposes a har- 
mony between a man's idea and his convictions, a 
balance between his emotions and his intellect, which 



250 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

is perforce but seldom met with among the sons of 
men. Never could it be called normal save perhaps in 
the sense of ideal. Let us put aside, then, any classi- 
fication of the subject's experience as normal or ab- 
normal, and turn our attention wholly to an exami- 
nation of the facts manifested by the process. 

The first indication of approaching change is mani- 
fested by a growing dissatisfaction with self, accom- 
panied by depression of spirits and fear. That the 
subject has been from babyhood strong in a sense of 
pious reverence and the love of serious things, does 
not appear to mitigate for him the horrors of this de- 
pression. His melancholy has no proportion to his 
conduct ; it is equally deep if he be sinless as Therese 
of the Holy Child, or if he be steeped in vice like 
George Miiller or Frederick Smith. This is among the 
first symptoms of the dissociation of religious stand- 
ards from conduct, which is so marked a characteristic 
in the person approaching conversion, and which indi- 
cates the completely emotional nature of the change. 
Under this strain the subject will excuse, nay, foster 
in himself, actions and attitudes the reverse of moral. 
He will banish cheerfulness, courage, and hope ; he will 
neglect his health, his person, his business, and his 
human relations. He will speak of his brother with 
reprobation, 9 or regard a mother's 10 or a husband's 
death 11 as release from a bond or "impediment." 
Not only is he overwhelmed by a flood of selfish fear ; 
but he is apparently deprived of any stimulus toward 
a return to healthier conditions. 

The approach of this depression may be rapid or 
slow ; it is characterized by its completeness and by its 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 251 

intensity. Never can we forget Bunyan's terror and 
distress, wherein, for months, "I was overcome with 
despair of life." With Uriel d'Acosta it endured for 
several years; with Henry AUine, four years; with 
Stephen Crisp, six to eight years; Augustin and 
Woolman suffered a long time; and John Crook 
for five years was so troubled in mind that he be- 
lieved he was possessed by the Devil, while he declares, 
"anguish and intolerable tribulation dwelt in my 
flesh." William Edmundson says he was much cast- 
down; C. G. Finney was in nervous anguish for 
months ; and George Fox dwelt in despair and in soli- 
tude. With Al-Ghazzali this melancholy terminated 
in a nervous prostration, during which he could 
neither speak nor digest his food. Cried poor Mar- 
tin Luther, during this period : * ' I have often need in 
my tribulations, to talk even with a child, in order 
to expel such thoughts as the Devil possesses me with !" 
And, while tortured by doubts on his entering the 
cloister, he quieted himself by reading and annotat- 
ing Augustin. Joseph Smith, who lived in what he 
called "the burnt-over district," so ravaged was it 
by religious epidemic, was fourteen when he became 
serious, and felt great uneasiness of mind. He grew 
troubled, read his Bible, was deeply moved and de- 
pressed, and retired to the woods to pray. His 
wretchedness lasted for more than a year. Lucy 
Smith, his mother, had an attack of nervous depres- 
sion preceding a vision; her father, Solomon Mack, 
had been filled with religious gloom for years; and 
was seventy-six before he was really eased and con- 
verted. Mme. Guyon's depression had at least the one 



252 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

amelioration that she did not at any time doubt her 
own piety or worthiness, and looked upon the feeling 
merely as a chastening from on high. This was also 
true in the case of A. C. Emmerich. 

Joseph Hoag, at eighteen, was in terrible distress for 
months, which terminated in an acute condition of 
melancholy lasting fourteen days; F. Howgill fasted, 
prayed, and suffered terribly for four or five years, 
dissatisfied with all forms of religious doctrine. The 
melancholy conflicts which befell the saintly Henry 
More were so intense that they caused him to observe, 
"there is nothing more to be dreaded for a man." 
Depression followed Patricius for weeks while he 
tended cattle in the fields ; Job Scott underwent alter- 
nate fits of gloom and dissipation, from puberty until 
about nineteen; Suso had no spiritual combats until 
after conversion, but his misery lasted with increasing 
power to the end, namely, thirty years. Teresa's 
period of depression must have been short. When she 
was about twenty years old, she speaks of the "cruel 
ennui" with which she entered the convent after an 
unhappy love-affair. In the curious and typical case 
of Tolstoi, the despair must have lasted for several 
years. At seventeen, the approach of conversion 
brought to Whitefield its load of fear and dread ; " an 
inward darkness," he says, "overwhelmed my soul"; 
and for months he remained much terrified. The 
acute crisis caused an illness of six or seven weeks. 
During college, Thomas Boston had a "heavy time" 
of depression and nightmare, which, however, was 
brief. Gertrude of Eisleben declares that the trou- 
ble in her soul lasted for more than a month. For 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 253 

nearly a year, Thomas Haliburton was grievously tor- 
mented, feared death, could not sleep, until after this 
time the agony died out. It is characteristic of Loyola 
that his distress did not begin till he was converted, 
and that it endured just so long as he continued his 
austerities and his ascetic life. His earlier religious 
feelings were all of peace and joy. 

During three years, Kulman Merswin, then a man of 
forty-five, underwent "the pains of hell," as he calls 
them; including violent night-terrors and unspeak- 
able melancholy. The admirable Richard Baxter 
passed through many a conflict, and owned to having 
"difficulties in his concernments' ' about many doc- 
trines. Jeanne de St. M. Deleloe was so much cast 
down by her feelings of guilt and misunderstanding 
of spiritual things, that it took her a year to recover. 
Neither illness, which burnt him up with fever, nor 
his renunciation of the life of the intellect, nor his 
austerities in his desert hermitage, could quiet Jer- 
ome's anguish of heart for a long time. Pascal's 
conflict of soul brought on a dreadful insomnia, and 
aggravated his already weakened condition. 

The curious temperament of Cardinal Newman knew 
no depression which is personal ; he is troubled about 
the dogmas of the Church, but never as to his own 
destination. Swedenborg also appears to have had no 
personal depression of any duration. In John Wes- 
ley's nature, the energy of goodness is too high for 
depression to take a great hold ; nevertheless he grew 
much worried as to his state, losing his tranquillity 
and optimism for some months. Angelique Arnauld, 12 
abbess of Port-Royal, is one of those Catholic natures 



254 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

for whom naught but gloom follows their first recep- 
tion of "La Grace. " With her it lasted for years. 
The well-known modern conversion of Alphonse de 
Ratisbonne is sudden, and absolutely lacking in the 
usual preceding symptoms of melancholy. In this, the 
reader will note a resemblance to the famous case 
of Colonel James Gardiner — which, however, is not 
strictly autobiographical material. F. M. P. Lieber- 
mann notes an uneasiness of but a few weeks. 
T. W. Allies, like Newman, is not so much worried 
about believing in God, as about the Real Presence and 
the Monophysites, yet he notes a frightful depression, 
which study and travel for months fail to cure. The 
anchoress Juliana of Norwich lived at too early a 
date to tell us much about herself, but with what a 
vividness of phrase does she describe that "irkness of 
myself that unneth I could have patience to live"! 
A. F. Ozanam had no rest by day or night for weeks, 
from "l'horreur des doutes qui ronge le cceur." The 
blessed Carlo da Sezze noticed in himself certain bouts 
of gloom and sorrow lasting at different periods in his 
life for several months. The Ursuline Marie de l'ln- 
carnation felt the melancholy of her sinful state, but 
was calmed after confession. Baptiste Varani had no 
remission of misery upon her conversion ; in fact, one 
black period lasted as long as two years. An English- 
man, Charles Simeon, searched out his iniquities, re- 
maining worried for three months. Catherine 
Phillips, a young Quaker, was so much affected by a 
sense of guilt that she concluded she had sinned 
against the Holy Ghost. "This," she writes, "af- 
fected my tender mind with sorrow and unutterable 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 255 

distress/' Her pillow was often watered with her 
tears; and she remained in this condition, "deeply 
broken' ' and mournful, for a space of eight years, or 
until she was twenty-two years old. 

Among the foregoing examples have been cited cer- 
tain of the more vivid and important members of the 
societies of Methodists and Friends. The following 
belong rather to the rank and file, although their cases 
are of significant interest. 

From his twelfth to his eighteenth year the Quaker 
John Churchman was overcome with wretchedness and 
fear. "No tongue can express the anguish I felt, 
afraid to lie awake, and afraid to go to sleep." John 
Griffith, on the contrary, was not alarmed until about 
nineteen years of age, and passed gradually from the 
darkness to light, with no actual moment of change 
noted. William Savery is twenty-eight when he be- 
gan to be troubled in mind. One evening "sit- 
ting . . . alone, great Horror and trouble seized me. 
I wept . . . and tasted the misery of fallen 
spirits ... a clammy sweat covered me," etc. This 
agony was of comparatively short duration. The 
frightful melancholy and distress which attacked 
Samuel Neale, at seventeen, caused him "to be as one 
bereft of understanding," but this also lasted only a 
short time. The preaching of Whitefield produced 
in Joseph Oxley, hitherto a stranger to such emotions, 
an agony so terrible that he "cried and shrieked 
aloud." Conversion in this case followed speedily. 
Six years of solitary weeping and mourning, in sore 
conflicts of the spirit, was the lot of John Banks be- 
fore he became "settled in the power of the Lord." 



256 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Great trouble of mind visited Christopher Story at 
eighteen, until his marriage brought him a year or two 
later under the influence of Friends. In the cases of 
P. Livingstone, M. Dudley, and C. Marshall, there is 
deep suffering. Thomas Story 's agony preceding con- 
version was brief. John Gratton's grief caused him, 
while still almost a child, "to cry with strong cries 
unto the Lord/' and he felt sorrowful, wept and 
mourned for many months. In the intervals he 
searched, unsuccessfully, for the truth. From sixteen 
to nineteen, Jane Hoskins was under a concern which 
caused her to lose much sleep, while she shed many 
tears. Myles Halhead, being about the age of thirty- 
eight years, sorrowed desperately for many days, took 
pleasure in nothing, "and in the Night-Season I could 
find no rest." John Pennyman traces the causes of 
his gloom to the execution of Charles I. God com- 
forted him after about two years of depression. The 
darkness and discouragement of John Fothergill, lasted 
four years with some remissions; in Eichard Jordan's 
case it lasted for several years. For experiences of 
utter agony and the sufferings of despair, the Metho- 
dist records give the most vivid accounts. John Nel- 
son, for weeks, felt an awful dread; was hideously 
tormented by insomnia and the fear of devils, from 
which he would awake sweating and exhausted. John 
Haime for some days had no rest day or night: "I 
was afraid to shut my eyes lest I should awake in 
hell." He was pursued by frightful dreams, one 
night thought that the Devil was in his room, and 
"was as if my very body had been in fire." Mary 
Fletcher, at about ten years old, injures her health 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 257 

with grieving. From seventeen to nineteen, Thomas 
Walsh grew wild and desperate from a sense of sin, 
often struck himself against the ground, tearing the 
hair from his head. Freeborn Garretson underwent 
three years of struggle and misery. Peard Dickinson 
at fifteen had an acute attack of depression and re- 
morse, was incessantly pursued by guilty and horrible 
ideas, could not study, longed to die, had hideous 
dreams; but had outgrown the worst of this stage 
when at seventeen he fell under Wesley's influence. 
William Jackson was pierced by a service in the Meth- 
odist Chapel, and aroused to abandon drink. He 
wrestled, cried, groaned, and mourned "for a space/ ' 
which he does not further define. Thomas Lee was 
despondent for nearly a year in unspeakable anguish. 
Eichard Rodda spent two years seeking rest for his 
soul. For about five years, off and on, John Pawson 
had no peace, wept and cried aloud. William Hunter 
lived in terrible distress for many months, after his 
conscience had been "pierced as with a sword.' ' In 
the cases of Thomas Olivers and Thomas Mitchell, this 
wretchedness lasted for six months, and in that of 
Peter Jaco for four months. Jacob Young and Joseph 
Travis, both American Methodists, were cast into the 
depths of self -horror for a briefer time and from at- 
tending revival meetings. The former was terribly 
afraid of Indians. B. Hibbard, a boy of twelve, began 
to have thoughts of hell when gazing at the fire. For 
three years thereafter he was horribly conscious of sin, 
and in great torment which caused insomnia. Lo- 
renzo Dow is fourteen when in his despair he attempts 
suicide, dreams of devils and hears the screeches of the 



258 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

damned ; but the crisis does not seem to have been pro- 
longed. On the other hand, we find William Capers 
distressed simply because he is not depressed. ' ' I was 
conscious of no painful conviction of sin — of no godly 
sorrow.' ' This lasts until his father, wrestling with 
his spirit, reduces him to tears. For some weeks, at 
fifteen, Daniel Young wept in solitude, and felt that he 
was hanging over the pit of hell. "Darkness and 
horror" overwhelm Benjamin Rhodes at nineteen and 
he falls into a horrible fit of despair. "At last," he 
cries, as if worn out with it, "the Lord heard." The 
testimony of Robert Wilkinson contains no dates nor 
note of time; it is but a record of horror and dis- 
traction. Thomas Ware's spirits were so low "that 
I was little better than a maniac !" A Methodist ser- 
mon struck Richard Whatcoat with a terrible fear of 
death and judgment, from which he obtained no re- 
lief day or night. This appears, from the cause of the 
narrative, to have endured for some weeks. Duncan 
Wright is affected by a fellow-soldier's influence, so 
that he was for a time utterly miserable and lost all 
taste for his former pleasures. In George Shadford's 
case, the misery is intermittent and much increased by 
a fever which fell on him. For three months, George 
Story felt darkness and horror, after having previously 
been so wretched that he was more like "an enraged 
wild beast than a rational creature." Between hear- 
ing two sermons of Whitefield, Thomas Rankin felt an 
inexpressible horror of mind. The friends of the 
young John Furz assure him that he is really good, 
yet for about two years he is in utter despair. He 
slept little because of his fear, wasted away, lost 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 259 

appetite, and during one struggle with temptation is 
stricken senseless for hours. Matthias Joyce was on 
hell's brink for two years. Haunted day and night, 
his flesh would creep, and he very nearly went insane 
from fear and horror. The state of misery which 
affected John de la Flechere is so unbearable that he 
declared he would rather go to hell. Peter Jones, an 
Indian Methodist, felt that his wretchedness was un- 
becoming a brave; it lasted all one night till his con- 
version at a dawn revival-meeting. For three weeks, 
Thomas Hanson was troubled with horrid suggestions, 
and became miserable beyond description. William 
Black seems to have felt " softening frames/' as he 
puts it, during all his youth but at no one crisis. Al- 
though he spent his time piously from eleven to six- 
teen, yet William Ashman is then beset by gloom, 
which lasts for four years more. Neither does John 
Mason obtain a lasting peace after hearing Whitefield 
preach, until five years later. The immediate effect 
of the sermon had been to plunge him into gloom and 
to deprive him of appetite and sleep. In the same 
way Hanson's preaching upsets William Carvosso, 
causing his spirit to suffer inward struggles for many 
days. A. H. Francke, a German, was ordained a min- 
ister at the time he realized his entire unbelief. With 
his first sermon, the distress passed and he obtained 
peace. The Evangelist Gates tells of deep misery dur- 
ing his childhood and youth ; its chief element seemed 
to be a fear of death, which induced despair, insomnia, 
horrid dreams, and thoughts of suicide. His recovery 
of tone was very gradual. Joseph Thomas, a tuber- 
culous boy, praying alone in the woods, was horribly 



260 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

afraid of the Devil. But his depression lasted only 
during the camp-meeting — forty-eight hours of fasting 
and excitement. He is far more fortunate than most, 
since he is settled in his mind at sixteen. John Mur- 
ray, being naturally vivacious and cheerful, considered 
himself virtuous only when thoroughly depressed, and 
these depressions are but brief. For some weeks, 
Samuel Hopkins was overwhelmed with doubt and 
gloomy thoughts ; while the Ranter, Joseph Salmon, de- 
clares that he was "struck dead to all my wonted en- 
joyments." 

The Presbyterian records of soul-struggles are few. 
Among others, George Brysson thought God had 
loosed Satan to assault him, "with dreadful tempta- 
tions and blasphemous suggestions, whereby I was al- 
most driven to despair." For some years, his state 
was lamentable. Gardiner Spring, influenced by a 
general revival at Yale, shut himself up (like E. N. 
Kirk) to wrestle with God; and was greatly troubled 
during the conflict in his unsettled soul. Oliver Hey- 
wood says that he was * ' ready to roar out in the bitter- 
ness of my soul." Alexander Gordon for six months 
felt his mind in horrible darkness and was thought to 
be going mad. David Brainerd underwent the mel- 
ancholy and despair suddenly, and it lasted for 
months. William Haslett has a horrible experience, 
but does not note its length. "It was eleven years," 
says William Wilson, after he "is frightened by a 
vision of death . . . until I won assurance of 
faith . . . and often I was much tossed with indwell- 
ing corruptions." The Baptist, Andrew Sherburne, 
compares his mind during two years or more, to a 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 261 

troubled sea. L. Kice states that his distress of mind 
caused him to wake in extreme agony, and that he 
literally wept and wailed. Joanna Turner, from four- 
teen to seventeen, thought no greater sinner existed 
than herself. The statement of J. H. Linsley de- 
scribes a condition of incredible anguish, lasting eleven 
months and bearing signs almost of mania. Visions 
of devils, horrors, cries of agony, and a dreadful 
burning of the soul, unite to overwhelm this unfor- 
tunate; who, if he but chanced to sleep, was sure to 
awaken, screaming. We know that the saintly John 
Tauler's depression beset him for over two years; and 
that John Calvin also felt this cloud, and for about 
the same period. Charles Bray observes that the time 
of religious unrest was "the most miserable years of 
my life"; and so wretched did the experience make 
William Plumer that he thereafter conceived an aver- 
sion, nay, a loathing, for religion. Spurgeon, the 
evangelist, having naught before his eyes but his own 
sins, felt horribly evil and utterly lost. Jerry Mc- 
Auley and Billy Bray had probably more cause to be 
alarmed about their state than many others we have 
noted. The first was in prison when he underwent 
this fierce conflict; the last, distressed by Bunyan's 
visions of heaven and hell, believed himself tormented 
by an active personal devil, so that he cried for mercy 
all night. Thomas Scott found Law 's ' ' Serious Call ' ' 
"a very uncomfortable book," and was affected by 
dread and disquiet for many years. Henry Ward 
Beecher thought of God as a sort of policeman lying 
in wait for him ; he was very miserable. Hell seemed 
to yawn for Jacob Knapp, whose mental trouble af- 



262 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

fected his health and generally upset him between 
seventeen and nineteen. A little black fiend squat- 
ting on the foot of Raoul Glaber's bed, caused that 
worldly-minded monk to rush into the chapel chilled 
with fear, remembering all his sins. A repetition of 
such a visitation led to his full conversion. Gloom 
overwhelmed the gentle sister Therese shortly after 
taking the veil. 

Many austerities practised at the age of sixteen, 
soon brought upon Mary of the Angels melancholy, 
impure thoughts, and the assault of devils, who an- 
noyed her by their cries and howls. The devils fought 
pell-mell around the poor Mere Jeanne des Anges, till 
Christ Himself spoke from the crucifix to save her. 
Maria d'Agreda experienced several attacks of gloom, 
and fell into deep horror, lasting for months at a 
time. Peter Favre went through a dreadful space 
of torment, scruple, and temptation, for four years or 
more. "Over and over again," writes John Trevor, 
' 1 1 wished I had never been born. ' ' David Nitschman 
fell into a dreadful blackness lasting a year ; while an- 
other Moravian, Christian David, suffered so intensely 
that for a while he ' ' came to loathe the very name of 
Christ. " 

The deeply religious feeling of Amiel could not 
avoid for him a perpetual discouragement and melan- 
choly, which no conversion ever came to change. An- 
gela da Foligno went through every typical mediaeval 
torment. To the mind of Jonathan Edwards, "it 
was not proper to express that concern by the name 
of terror"; yet it brought him a great misery. Ger- 
trude More felt her heart become "more hard to 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 

good than ever was a stone"; while it took his 
wife's illness and death to shake the soul of Count 
Schouvaloff. 13 

Whatever may be the effect of this accumulation of 
data, it will at least serve to accentuate very sharply 
that dissociation of this religious process from usual 
standards of conduct, to which reference has just been 
made. With a misery so poignant and an absorption 
in it so complete, it follows that these cases cease to 
be interested in anything except themselves. In 
strongly marked attacks, the canons of ordinary be- 
havior have no restraining power; while the disap- 
proval of others simply adds to the burden and in- 
tensifies the egotism by the idea of martyrdom. M. M. 
Alacoque and Mme. Guyon did turn the other cheek, 
but they did it with an alacrity which must have been 
in itself exasperating. The insensibility to ethical 
ideas which these cases display has already been noted, 
and further examples are easily to be found. 14 Sal- 
imbene 's abandonment of his old father, Sainte-Chan- 
tal's of her children, are instances of this insensibility, 
which will extend, at moments, to physical suffering 
of one's self or of others. The obligation to one's em- 
ployer is felt no longer; the steadying effect of work 
is denied to the sufferer. 15 No entreaties, no upbraid- 
ings of friends or relatives, can suffice to turn him 
from his fixed despair. 

Certain among the cases heighten this despair and 
give it a peculiarly terrible character by the addition 
of that obscure and dreadful idea known to them as 
the unpardonable sin. The list of unpardonable sin- 



264 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

ners is not large ; its conception required a vividness of 
imagination which is fortunately rare, since it seems 
to have more power to create suffering than any other 
similar idea in the world. The person thus torment- 
ing himself often appears to the observer to have 
passed the boundaries of sanity, or, at the least, to have 
come under the domination of an idee fixe. 

The whole conception of an unpardonable sin dis- 
plays characteristics which have an especial signifi- 
cance for the later chapters of this book. The first is 
its entire lack of definiteness, — the doubt of what it is 
in the mind of the person who yet is quite sure that 
he has sinned it. Many confessants express this 
doubt in so many words. For instance, John Bunyan 
writes: "I wished to sin the sin against the Holy 
Ghost"; when he is not at all certain how this is to 
be accomplished. A dreadful feeling of guilt — and 
nothing else — caused Robert Wilkinson and Catherine 
Phillips to be sure they had committed this particular 
sin. J. Travis and J. Trevor are both exceedingly 
worried lest they should have sinned it unawares. 
Sampson Staniforth becomes convinced that he has 
done so ; whereas Whitefield is horribly afraid of being 
afraid of this trespass. His undefined terror of the 
mere idea, which he saw as a sort of embodiment of 
Satan, whereat " great heavings went through me," is 
an accurate exemplification of Maudsley's general de- 
scription: "The very mystery of that one stupen- 
dous sin, its vague and unknown nature, has an awful 
fascination for the imagination, which is held by it in 
a sort of cataleptic trance. ' ' 16 And trance, in truth, 
is apt to be the culmination of the attack. 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 265 

One of the most vivid accounts of this experience 
occurs in Borrow 's novel, ' ' Lavengro. ' ' 17 The author 
puts it into the mouth of Peter Williams, the farmer ; 
yet no one who reads it but will be certain it is 
autobiographical, that the experience was Borrow 's 
own. Peter, a grown man, tells how at seven years 
old, he first heard there was such a sin. Thereafter, 
"he felt a strong inclination to commit it"; but 
terror restrained him. The impulse is described as 
capricious and intermittent ; for weeks together it died 
away and left him in peace. Finally, out of childish 
bravado, he murmurs horrible words. As no lightning 
strikes him after the act, he is, if anything, relieved; 
but this relief is followed by a growing and creeping 
terror;— an overwhelming despair in the conviction 
that the sin is committed beyond recall. Years after- 
wards, this despair is still feeding upon his mind ; and 
he is freed from it only when his wife, with tears, 
implores him to believe that such a sin was impossible 
to so young a child. 

Peter, of course, does not repeat the words in which 
he thinks the sin took shape; but it is most often in 
some form of a curse that it is conceived by the illiter- 
ate. Says Margaret Lucas, a Friend, aged nineteen: 
"One night, as I lay in bed, on a sudden a voice as 
I thought audible and like my own, cursed the Lord 
and defied heaven, saying, 'Now am I damned, for 
I have committed the unpardonable sin.' I fell, 
from agony, into a complete perspiration, and the bed 
shook with my strong trembling." In the same way, 
Joseph Hoag was frightfully tempted, "to curse God, 
father, mother, and the Bible"; while to resist this 



266 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

temptation nearly drove him insane. To the poor 
little nun Jeanne de St. M. Deleloe came "le penser 
de eracher a la Sainte Hostie"; which thought, to a 
devout Catholic, would be almost an unpardonable 
sin in itself. 

Here are examples sufficient to show the nature of 
this conception, whose very existence involves contra- 
diction. It appears to have been largely a Christian 
invention; for Hebrew theology does not admit that 
any sin is unpardonable. 18 The doubt in the mind 
of the confessant as to the real nature of his tres- 
pass, seems less remarkable, however, when one notes 
how early such uncertainty existed; for the Fathers 
themselves are by no means unanimous as to the ex- 
act constitution of this sin. The Church defines it 
as "to deny from pure malice the Divine character 
of works manifestly Divine." 19 Thomas Aquinas 
held it to consist in direct insult to the Holy Ghost; 
while Augustin cannot believe it to be aught but 
final impenitence. 20 Since the doctrine of redemp- 
tion would hardly seem to admit of so notable an ex- 
ception, it follows that Augustin 's is practically the 
only explanation of this curious dogma which is at 
all logically consistent. Interesting it is, therefore, 
to find that not this explanation, but something 
much more unreasoning and primitive, shows in the 
experiences just related. The confessants are all 
young — some are children — when they believe this 
sin to have been committed, moreover, not one of 
them is finally impenitent. It would seem as if such 
an obsession in their case almost denied the funda- 
mental doctrine of salvation; — nor does it take the 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 267 

brain of an Augustin to see that serious complications 
would result if the truth of such an idea were to be 
admitted. For if a child of seven, by ignorantly in- 
sulting the Holy Ghost, were to live his life in peni- 
tent expiation, — only to be damned eternally, — where, 
then, lay the value of the Redemption, or the glory of 
the Redeemer ? Even the mediaeval mind hesitated to 
allow doctrine so dangerous ; particularly when it can 
be based only on a chance word of that Christ, whose 
law and whose promise was love. 21 The truth is 
that the unpardonable sin is not wholly a mediaeval 
idea, but should be classed, rather, with that group 
of concepts which had lingered over from the past in 
the popular mind, to be developed and heightened by 
the mediaeval imagination. All human terrors have, 
in fact, the deepest root and importance; their an- 
tiquity is proclaimed by their vague and unreasoning 
character ; and we know that the fear of men belongs 
to the oldest part of the race. The confusion existing 
in the minds of the Fathers, when they tried to cast 
this particular fear into a dogma, testifies that they 
felt certain misgivings as to the rigid interpretation 
of the texts on which they based it ; at the same time 
that they fully recognized the presence in the world 
of such an emotion and such a conception. 

When a fact in human nature coexists with various 
and opposing explanations, it is safe to infer that the 
fact is very much older than the explanation. Yet 
we know that the unpardonable sin is not to be looked 
for among the Jewish origins of Christianity. More- 
over, it is certainly striking to find that Dante's In- 
ferno holds no circle for these sinners; that to the 



268 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

poet, blasphemy is by no means the worst of offences 
nor does he mete out to it so heavy a punishment as 
to many other transgressions. Dante evidently can- 
not conceive of any sin, nor of any sinner, wholly 
incapable of pardon — and the absence of this sin to the 
scheme of the "Divina Commedia," is surely a proof 
of its absence to the whole fourteenth-century scheme 
of human error and penitence. 

Yet the very visage, as it were, of the unpardonable 
sin, its bizarrerie, namelessness, and vivid qualities, be- 
long to a savage past. What, then, may be our infer- 
ence regarding it? Simply, that during the Middle 
Ages it had not yet differentiated itself and taken 
that particular and individual form with which we 
are later accustomed to identify it. Then, such a con- 
ception was still part of that group of terrors whose 
roots we now know to strike down into primitive and 
brute nature; such as the supernatural in all its 
shapes, diabolical possession, witchcraft, evil spells, 
and so forth. Its separation from and evolution out of 
this group, its development into a purely individual 
fear, — a horror personal and subjective, — is a proof 
of its relation to the phenomena of religious survival. 

The place to discuss this phase of religious experi- 
ence and its connection with the subject of survival, is 
one belonging properly to the later sections of this 
study; nor should the reader's attention be longer 
diverted from the main body of facts which he has 
just reviewed, and of which the unpardonable sin 
data form but part. The impression made by these 
facts as a whole, will be found to have been chiefly the 
result of their uniformity, their peculiarity, and their 



THE DATA ANALYZED: II 269 

intensity. It is by means of this very uniformity, in- 
tensity, and peculiarity, that these examples of re- 
ligious depression have come to assume a significance 
which will eventually lead to better understanding of 
their origin. 



VII 

THE DATA ANALYZED: III 



I. Conversion: Theory. 
II. Conversion: suggestion in, 

III. Conversion: the data of, 

IV. Conversion: note on Paul's. 

V. Conversion: doubtful examples. 
VI. Reaction and relapse. 
VII. "Covenanters with God." 
VIII. Termination of the process. 



VII 

THE DATA ANALYZED: III 

Before discussing the actual moment of conversion 
and its attendant phenomena, it may be well briefly to 
consider some of the more prevalent theories which at- 
tempt to explain these phenomena. The change which 
conversion causes in the individual has been of deep 
interest to psychologists for the past half-century, 
since it affords them certain uniform and salient 
means of approaching the difficult subject of person- 
ality. Conversion — be it religious or other — seems a 
valid instance of a sudden, violent change in the 
personality of the converted. What he was before he 
appears no longer; a whole new set of energies, of 
ideals, wishes, and powers, would seem to have sprung 
into existence. Hence the phrase in common use that 
he is a "new man." But this "new man" cannot 
spring out of nothing ; he must have had some connec- 
tion with that "old man" which, by the conversion, is 
cast aside. "What, then, has actually taken place ? 

As is usual in all subjects where students have spent 
their energies in drawing conclusions without per- 
sonally collecting data, what takes place has been 
ingeniously misconstrued. Various hypotheses have 
been formulated, much less according to the facts of 
the case than according to the preconceived belief of 

273 



274 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

the theorists. Typical among them is that interpreta- 
tion well expressed by Harold Begbie in his vivid 
little books, ' ' Souls in Action' ' and ' ' Twiceborn Men. ' ' 
The author recites a number of conversions operated 
through the work of the London Mission ; and from 
them draws the inference that "Christianity" is "the 
only force which can change a radically bad man into 
a radically good one." Not at all worried by such a 
contradiction in terms, this writer frankly looks to- 
ward Christianity to furnish an explanation of the 
phenomena it appears to cause. 

When we turn elsewhere, however, we may find 
conversion somewhat metaphysically defined as "a 
disturbance of the equilibrium of the self, which re- 
sults in the shifting of the field of consciousness from 
lower to higher levels . . . and the beginning of trans- 
cendence. ' ' 1 Here is one of those calmly a priori defi- 
nitions which are at once the despair and the oppor- 
tunity of the simple seeker for the truth. If the levels 
to which the field of consciousness shifted, during and 
after conversion, were higher levels, then this state- 
ment would have more validity; but unfortunately, 
except in rare instances, they are not. Such defini- 
tions arise naturally from the consideration of cer- 
tain very special cases, and they are totally destroyed 
by any fair examination of all the facts. 

A writer, 2 analyzing the case of Pascal, terms con- 
version "the restoration of equilibrium to a mind 
hitherto unbalanced"; which definition, if one inserts 
the word "temporary" before "restoration," might 
perhaps stand. It is not clarified further by this 
writer's comparison of the process to that of a snake 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 275 

casting its skin; 3 or his talk about the "sudden emer- 
gence into consciousness of the subliminal or second- 
ary self. ' ' Professor James 4 avoids definitions ; dis- 
cussing the whole subject in his especially felicitous 
manner combining good literature and sound psychol- 
ogy. Yet he also tends to regard as final, results given 
by a few selected cases and supported by the funda- 
mentally unsound method of the "questionnaire." 
Still another writer suggests that the main factor in 
conversion is the religious emotion superseding and 
supplanting all emotion before given by sin or pleas- 
ure. 5 Thus the convert's energies find a new out- 
let, while his worldly interest and his appetite for sin 
are lessened. By tracing the whole process to an emo- 
tional source, and by showing that it is based on an 
integral emotional necessity, Dr. Cutten has furnished 
a valuable starting-point, and one which becomes more 
significant the deeper goes our investigation. The 
limits, however, of such an investigation do not stop 
at Christianity, as this writer would seem to think, 
if any vital results are to be achieved therein. 

The above citations are sufficient to indicate the 
trend of modern theory. Such psychological doctrine 
as they rely upon for support has been already 
glanced at in an earlier section, but it is necessary to 
make some further enquiry here, if that question is 
to be answered as to what actually takes place dur- 
ing conversion. 6 Hoffding defines psychology as a 
' ' Science of the Soul, ' ' and this definition, which later 
workers regard both as provisional and inadequate, 
serves to show what was the starting-point of the 
earlier investigator. 



276 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

No doubt the reason why the subject failed to come 
under the general methods of science for so long a 
time, lay in the difficulty of making any progress 
through the usual means; namely, by any investiga- 
tion into the brain and its functions during their 
normal activity. A physician tells us that "nothing 
is more undemonstrative to mere inspection than 
healthy brain-matter, ' ' 7 and by study of the diseased 
brain alone was any progress made possible. But so 
soon as investigation into the normal brain processes 
had established the great truth that the brain was not 
an unit, then immediately a fresh set of difficulties 
presented themselves to the psychological investigator. 
He was brought face to face with the complex and be- 
wildering problem of Personality, and the deeper he 
delved into this question, the more he attempted to 
solve it by the weapons of his logic and his imagina- 
tion, the more quickly he appeared to arrive at what 
Sir William Hamilton terms "the inexplicability of 
ultimate facts." If the brain is not "a single organ 
working as an unit," then in what portion of it do 
those elements reside which make up our personality ; 
what is this personality, and how does it account for 
the facts? When Mill said that "the phenomena of 
self and of memory are merely two sides of the same 
fact," he did not add that, whereas the brutes have 
memory, they appear to have but the faintest adum- 
bration of what we call personality. The "wave- 
theory" of Professor James, which considers that each 
passing wave of consciousness is a part of that wave 
which preceded it, is open to other vital objections. 8 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 277 

From this chaotic borderland of theory one obtains 
finally two salient ideas: 

That the central point of personality is self-con- 
sciousness, would seem to be no longer a matter of 
doubt; and that this personality, this Ego, whatever 
it be, is not an unit, not homogeneous, and not static, 
would seem to be equally matter of proof. Whether 
the elements which combined to produce it exist in a 
state of flux, 9 or whether, according to another theory, 
they are incessantly being dispersed and reassembled, 
as in sleep and waking, is of lesser importance, once 
the fact of the fundamental instability of their com- 
bination has been grasped. The laboratory experi- 
ment, the use of hypnosis, have provided many pre- 
cise means of determining this instability, its degree 
and its limitations, other than could possibly be men- 
tioned in this study; the main fact remains that it is 
so to be determined. And once this idea is formu- 
lated by the mind, it has advanced several paces 
nearer the answer to that question of what actually 
takes place. 

If by an analogy taken from astronomy it could be 
brought closer to the imagination, Personality might 
be depicted as a nebula; of which the nuclear cen- 
tre is Consciousness, while the power holding the 
atoms together, is Will. By such analogy it will 
readily be understood that should anything occur to 
loosen the grip of will, the atoms composing this un- 
stable combination will no longer remain unified. 
Now, the various elements thus normally under con- 
trol, the emotions, the imagination, the reason, and 



.278 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

so on, are present in different proportions in each in- 
dividual. These proportions are the result of many 
influences, of which race, evolution, heredity, nutri- 
tion, social conditions, are probably the most signifi- 
cant ; and the ratio of each to each other varies widely 
and is of the utmost importance. Any shifting of pro- 
portions must cause a tendency to readjustment in the 
entire mass. 

This analogy is hardly complete, yet it will serve 
by permitting us to visualize what follows. In a full, 
normal, healthy personality, these elements are in- 
terfused so that they act as an unit upon surrounding 
circumstances. Anything which happens to alter the 
proportion of these elements, tends to diffuse the 
mass, and temporarily to disunite the combination 
forming the personality. When, so diffused, the neb- 
ula no longer whirls evenly, then the personality is 
said to be unbalanced ; and when, through some other 
force, this diffused mass is again freshly charged by a 
current of will, it coalesces, it integrates, it moves 
evenly once more. 

This metaphor is not so fantastic as it appears; 
for the sober treatises of science make a constant use 
of words and phrases based on similar conceptions. 
The terms commonly dealing with that portion of the 
consciousness which lies outside of the nucleus, show 
this. Dr. Pratt, for instance, names it the "feeling 
mass" or "the fringe of consciousness." 10 It is 
called by others the subconscious or extra-marginal 
self. 11 The incoherent character of this primal con- 
sciousness, even before it arrived at a stage of de- 
velopment whence it was enabled to produce ideas, is 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 279 

spoken of as the result of evolution; and is seen at 
work in the embryo, the infant. As it draws together, 
as it becomes nucleated, definite, and effective, per- 
sonality results. 

But the primordial stuff of consciousness is not all 
used in the formation of this active nucleus. There 
is a residuum which lies outside, a loose, diffused 
"feeling mass" which serves to envelope, like some 
tenuous gas, the periphery of the nebula. Such mat- 
ter will remain in this extra-marginal territory, un- 
less some influence, acting to widen and agitate the 
whirl, will, for the time being, force the fringe with- 
in the range of the active nucleated centre of con- 
sciousness. Through the medium provided by re- 
ligious confessions, the psychological process involved 
in such experiences is laid bare to us, so that we may 
visualize and understand the actual occurrence. 

Personality, then, pictured as a nebula, with all its 
elements under the control of will, is thus seen mov- 
ing through life, as we express it, "well-balanced" 
on its axis. A close study of its constitution would 
doubtless reveal (in those cases which come under our 
particular observation) that emotions preponderate 
in the mass; while its unity is delicately maintained, 
and under a certain amount of strain. At a given 
stage we mark the entrance of the destructive forces, 
placing the entire personality on the rack of intensity, 
fear, or doubt. Health is invariably injured, enor- 
mously affecting the balance, by causing the instabil- 
ity to become greater at one and the same moment 
that physical weakness loosens the centripetal force 
of the will. Immediately, the nebula is disunited 



280 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

and diffused. The various elements are dispersed, 
naught moves harmoniously, a man is said to be at 
war with himself, and so in truth he is. 

This stage has been concretely developed for the 
reader in the group of examples just reviewed under 
the heading ' ' Depression. ' ' There are cases, of 
course, in which the dissociation becomes so complete 
that insanity or death is its only outcome. But in the 
vast majority of persons the condition is but tem- 
porary, following the indicated crises, and resulting 
from indicated conditions. It is apt to occur during 
puberty; for, although, from the ideal standpoint, 
youth should unfold symmetrically, harmoniously, and 
without crises, yet in actual life the very reverse 
is usually the case. After a lapse of time, varying 
widely in different instances, the disturbed elements 
of personality tend to seek readjustment to meet these 
new conditions. The fluctuations involved in this 
change, cause a tension exceedingly nervous and pain- 
ful to the subject, already clouded by darkness and 
despair, and this tension is often depicted as a 
struggle, a conflict in which the different forces of 
personality are arrayed the one against the other. 

It is customary to describe the termination of this 
conflict as a yielding-up of the will, but on examina- 
tion the expression is found to be far from accurate. 
It is not the will which is yielded, but rather the 
various morbid obstructions to its harmonious action, 
which are overcome by a revival of that central force, 
heretofore weakened and ineffectual. It is the will's 
fresh assertion; its fresh energy to say, "I come, 
Lord!" or "Do as thou wilt"; which brings at length 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 281 

peace to the sufferer. At once the jarring mass is 
integrated, the elements healthily coalesce; the sub- 
ject would tell you he had "found peace"; that he 
was a new man, strengthened for a new life. By this, 
he really means that he is at last freed from all sensa- 
tions save natural ones ; that he is now no more con- 
scious of the processes of his soul than he should 
be aware of the processes of his digestion; for, with 
the spiritual as with the physical nature, any con- 
sciousness of the machinery means that it is not run- 
ning as it ought. The man is then " converted " ; his 
wheel turns a new round. Reconstruction begins, 
and, weary of the tension of doubt, he readily sub- 
mits to further peace-making influences. 

The immediate cause of this healing and benefi- 
cent change has been defined by psychologists as a 
"yielding to suggestion," and in this phrase lies the 
crux of the whole matter. Granting that there is no 
objection to the image of personality as a nebula; or 
that the reader through this means has better visual- 
ized these obscure occurrences, long ere this he has 
realized that such an image offers no explanation 
of their cause. Informed that the reconstruction of 
this disunited mass of elements has been the work of 
an outside influence named "suggestion," his next 
question will naturally be to enquire what, in a psy- 
chological sense, is known about this suggestion? 

"By suggestion," he is answered in the words of a 
modern investigator, 12 "is meant the intrusion into 
the mind of an idea, met with more or less opposition 
by the person, accepted uncritically at last; and rea- 
lized unreflectively, almost automatically. By sug- 



282 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

gestibility is meant that peculiar state of mind which 
is favorable to suggestion. ' ' 

It is unnecessary for the purposes of this volume to 
enter deeply into the technique of suggestion, or to 
explain the experiments by which the facts have been 
attained. As regards the religious experience, the 
suggestion-theory has been advanced rather tenta- 
tively ; due no doubt to the insufficiency of valid data, 
for which the questionnaire method is partially, 
at least, responsible. But the reader will have little 
difficulty in applying the generalizations just cited to 
the data in these pages, if he also bear in mind that 
"the first and general condition of normal suggesti- 
bility is fixation of the attention"; 13 and that "indi- 
rect suggestion is often more effective than direct 
suggestion." 14 

Francis Galton, 15 trying some "experiments in the 
Human Faculty, ' ' proved the extreme susceptibility of 
our mental and nervous centres to suggestion. Among 
other experiments he sought "to evoke the commoner 
feelings of Insanity by investing everything I met with 
the attributes of a spy! It was long," he adds, "be- 
fore the uncanny feeling thus aroused wore away." 
Almost every one of us has in his proper person 
undergone some such experience, and has realized the 
force on himself of a repeated idea. Books, plays, 
newspapers, all the influences of the world at large, 
will serve to bring it home to him, and to his daily 
life. Every parent makes conscious or unconscious 
use of suggestion in training children, in whom psy- 
chologists agree to find a degree of suggestibility al- 
most equal to that which exists in hypnosis; 16 and over 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 283 

whom the simplest idea may thus have an uncanny 
power. 

The study of suggestion has been undertaken very 
largely through the examination of diseased nervous 
functions ; and the French neurologists Charcot, Janet, 
and others, have done pioneer work along these lines. 
From their writings one may obtain some significant 
facts, highly illuminative of the confessant's state of 
mind during the conversion-crisis. M. Janet 17 it 
should be noted at the outset, has the medical-material- 
ist view, which places all religious emotionalism 
definitely and finally in the realm of pathology. 
He observes the susceptibility of these cases to sug- 
gestion, also remarking that incipient hystericals 
* ' come out of the confessional calmed and cheered. ' ' 18 
The further parallel between the states of mind in 
the subjects of M. Janets study and our confessants 
of emotional religious experience, is very striking, and 
must not be overlooked, even if one does not wish to 
follow this medical-materialist reasoning all the way. 
For instance, M. Janet's cases also desire to place 
themselves under authority, and to have the simplest 
matters decided for them. There is complete apathy ; 
often combined with that form of insensibility to emo- 
tions and to family ties, which is characteristic of cer- 
tain confessants, to whom nothing counts beside the 
idee fixe. 19 M. Janet also points out that "a tendency 
to suggestion and to subconscious acts is the sign . . . 
of hysteria; and that the constitutional doubter is 
predisposed in this direction. ' ' 20 Such is the person 
who is incapable of even small decisions and whose 
whole life is rendered useless from his wavering. Com- 



284 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

menting on the various "provocative agents" in these 
cases, among which he classes the period of puberty, 
improper nutrition depressing the nervous system, 
overwork, anxiety, or emotion, M. Janet 21 lays much 
emphasis on hereditary influences which dispose the 
mind to such tendencies; and which are frequently 
indicated in the records just reviewed. 

Such work as this naturally tends to class mysticism 
with hysteria; and not the least of M. Janet's examples 
is Teresa, 22 whose "Autobiography" he regards much 
as Charcot that of the Mere Jeanne des Anges. A 
recent study of mysticism vigorously combats this at- 
titude toward the great contemplatives ; and in truth 
it is one which will find many antagonists. 23 The 
citations just made are not for the purpose of agree- 
ment, but rather to aid the reader in comprehending 
that power of suggestion which plays so vital a part 
in the drama of religious change. 

Bearing these facts in mind, let us for an instant 
return to that image of personality, whirling its 
incoherent nebula of sensations and ideas through 
the universe, and readily susceptible to direct and 
indirect suggestions. Somewhat slowly at first, then 
more rapidly, the forces already analyzed tend to set 
up a disturbance and finally to produce disunion. 
The suggestion, which at a crisis serves to reanimate 
the weakened will and to reassemble the dispersed ele- 
ments, is inevitably swift, sudden, and definite. In 
the sincere and full record, it is almost always trace- 
able, so that one may put his finger upon it exactly, if 
one will. It charges into the melee, as it were, pre- 
cisely at that moment when high nervous tension has 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 285 

predisposed the imagination to abnormal sensitive- 
ness and activity, and thus turns the fortunes of the 
day. 

"Intensity of thought operating on intensity of 
feeling may elicit surprising illumination," is the 
penetrating remark of Sir Egerton Brydges ; 24 and 
one cannot therefore be surprised at the effect which 
a powerful suggestion may have upon the mind. Nec- 
essarily is the field of consciousness during this period 
of tension occupied by the most fantastic and over- 
charged ideas. Excitability of the nerve-centres re- 
sulting, there may suddenly appear visual and audi- 
tory hallucinations of extraordinary vividness. Such 
phenomena will be found to bear a marked family like- 
ness ; and in most cases they are the media of the sug- 
gestion itself. 

This is often conveyed to the sufferer by what seems 
to him a voice, sometimes issuing a command, such 
as ' ' Tolle, lege ! " 25 or, ' ' Surrender, or thou shalt 
die ! ' ' 26 or, ' ' Awake, sinner ! " 27 or, "Go to Pennsyl- 
vania ! ' ' 28 or, " Take no care for thy business. " 29 It 
may be in the form of consolation or reassurance: 
"Thy sins are forgiven thee"; 30 or, "Fear not, oh, 
thou tossed ! " 31 or, " Thou shalt walk with me in 
white. " 32 It is often a question, — * ' Paul, Paul, why 
persecutest thou me?" 33 or, "Oh, sinner, did I suffer 
for thee?" 34 and it is at times an ejaculation, like 
* ' Helios ! " 35 or, " Eternity, eternity, the endless term 
of long eternity ! " 36 Plain, final statements, such as 
"Life and death consist in loving God," 37 or, "It is 
finished, " 38 are very effective suggestions to a sensi- 
tive person. It is not forgotten that to Luther the 



i 



286 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

statement was simply, "the just shall live by faith." 
If in the nature of a vision, this suggestion usually 
takes the form of the figure of Christ ; 39 although often 
that of Mary, 40 and sometimes the Holy Child. 41 The 
dazzling lights 42 which accompany this crisis have 
been variously interpreted by the devout and by the 
neurologist ; while monstrous and devilish visions 43 tes- 
tify to the vivid imagination of the Middle Ages. 
When we remember Dr. Sidis's observation that "a 
familiar thing, in a strange abnormal position or 
shape, produces the most effective suggestion," 44 — 
then many of these apparitions, such as Loyola's plec- 
trum and the Crucifix of Colonel Gardiner, become 
the more readily comprehensible. 

In giving this somewhat long introduction to the 
analysis of the cases themselves, we have a little de- 
parted from our original inductive plan. By so do- 
ing, however, we have but followed the injunction of 
no less a mind than that of Auguste Comte. " If it be 
true," said Comte, "that every theory must be based 
upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts can- 
not be observed without the guidance of some theory. 
Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory 
and fruitless ; we could not retain them, for the most 
part we could not even perceive them." 45 Dealing 
with data so chaotic and often so emotionally over- 
charged as that concerning conversion, a need of guid- 
ance becomes obvious. But the reader need now no 
longer be withheld from exercising his logical powers 
over the problem presented by the cases themselves. 

"I was one night alone," says Henry Alline, 46 
"pondering on my lost condition, when all of a sudden 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 287 

I was surrounded with an uncommon light like a blaze 
of fire ; I was plunged into keen despair, every power 

of my mind was strained with terror and surprise ' ' 

Visions of damnation, with tempting by beautiful 
fiends, followed: ''One midnight I was awaked out 
of sleep by a still, small voice. ... I thought I saw 
a small body of light as plain as possible before me." 
Recurrences of a similar kind are many, and when at 
length he picks up his Bible and opens it at random, 
he is l ' inexpressibly ravished. ' ' * ' My whole soul, ' ' he 
declares, " seemed filled with the Divine Being." 

Elizabeth Ashbridge, Quaker, thus describes "the 
peculiar exercise" which befell her at the fateful mo- 
ment: "I thought myself sitting by a fire, in com- 
pany with several others, when there arose a thunder- 
gust, and a voice as loud as from a mighty trumpet 
pierced my ears with these words, 'Oh Eternity! 
Eternity, the endless term of long eternity!' " Her 
heart is alarmed and melted by this manifestation. 

Augustin's account is a world-possession. After 
he was "sick and tormented," we hear of the agony, 
the storm, the healing outburst of tears, the inward 
voice bidding, "Tolle, lege!" of which he says: "Nor 
could I ever remember to have heard the like," and 
at which "all the gloom of doubt vanished away." 
In whatever connection it is regarded, the beauty and 
intensity of this record remain unsurpassed. Equally 
well known is Bunyan's narrative, wherein, during 
a game, "a voice from heaven did suddenly fall into 
my soul. ' ' During prayer, he fancied the Devil pulled 
his clothes; but the moment which he called conver- 
sion, was followed by recurring clouds of darkness. 



288 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Peter Cartwright, the Evangelist, who does not men- 
tion any preceding melancholy, has a sudden and aw- 
ful experience at the age of sixteen. 47 "It seemed 
to me," he writes, "all of a sudden my blood rushed 
to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I 
turned blind, an awful impression rested on my mind 
that death had come. ' ' The excitement following this 
condition was fostered by his pious mother; and he 
was not calmed until a voice called to him, ' ' when out 
alone in the horse-lot.'' 

The rare tract in which John Crook tells of his 
experiences is written in a style of extraordinary 
vividness. After his anguish and tribulation, one 
morning on a sudden there "sprang in me a voice, 
saying, 'Fear not, oh, thou tossed'; whereupon all 
was hushed and quieted within me. Here was such 
calm and stillness, I was filled with peace and joy, and 
there shone such an inward light that for the space of 
seven or eight days I walked as one taken from the 
earth." The revivalist, C. G. Finney, underwent a 
strange and oppressed feeling, as if he were about 
to die. On walking to his law office, an inward voice 
accosted him ; and later, arising from prayer, and open- 
ing the door of his room, Jesus stood before him in 
the flesh. Both lights and voices beset George Fox, in 
the wilderness during his religious travail, much as the 
demons in form and sound beset Guibert de Nogent in 
his monastery. Luther was sitting in his cell, several 
years after his first depression, when he was struck 
by the words, "The just shall live by faith." Mme. 
Guyon is turned by hearing a voice which tells 
her she is the bride of God. This same idea we find 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 289 

in many earlier cases of mystical women. Joseph 
Hoag had been in such a state that (he says) "my 
eyes looked ghastly/ ' when his conversion came. "I 
laid down in weakness and heard as plain a whisper as 
ever I heard from a human being : * Surrender — or you 
shall die and go to the place of everlasting torment ! ' " 
He could only whisper the Lord's Prayer, and the 
cloud was lifted. The conversion of St. Patrick is 
accompanied by the vision of the sun, whereat he cried, 
1 1 Helios ! ' ' — but he also hears a voice when asleep in 
the wilderness. As Oliver Sansom, a Quaker, "lay in 
bed in the morning early, I heard as it were an audi- 
ble voice which said unto me, 'Take no care for thy 
business. ' ' ' Suso has supernatural raptures and is 
caught up in ecstasy, during which what he saw and 
heard no tongue can tell. He had been a monk for 
five years before his conversion; and thereafter his 
visions were many, and progressed from those of 
beauty to those of horror. Although Teresa's visions 
and voices are many, they are not attached to any 
conversion in the ordinary sense ; but came afterwards, 
and accompanied her progress along the way of mysti- 
cism and sanctity. "When I kneeled down," says 
Whitefield, "I felt great heavings in my body . . . 
sweat came through me"; Satan terrifies him, yet 
he observes that he had no visions, only the fear of 
them. The physical disturbances are as great as 
though the vision of the Lord had occurred. 

Gertrude of Eisleben writes very beautifully about 
the circumstances of her conversion which began 
"sweetly and charmingly," she says, "by appeasing 
the trouble which thou hadst excited in my soul for 



290 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

more than a month ... on raising my head I beheld 
thee . . . under the form of a youth of sixteen years, 
beautiful and amiable. ' ' During a severe illness about 
this time, Jesus visits and consoles her, while she ob- 
serves that he is wearing a necklace of gold and rose- 
color. It is interesting to find her declaring that fear 
was the first element of her conversion. Like the fore- 
going — like almost all, indeed, of the mediaeval mys- 
tics — the conversion-visions of Ignatius Loyola are of 
a beautiful and ravishing kind. "On a certain night, 
as he lay awake, he saw with open face the likeness of 
the blessed Mother of God with her holy child 
Jesus," and from that moment felt all carnal desires 
vanish. Later on, the character of the phenomena 
changes much for the worse; serpents with eyes and 
strange demons replace the lovely picture of the 
mother and child. It is also the Holy Child in the 
mother's arms who smiled on Salimbene in the chapel. 
The abbot Othloh of St. Emmeran 48 in Regensburg 
was converted without long preliminary agony. — 
"As he was sitting one day before the gates of the 
monastery," says the translator, "reading his favor- 
ite author Lucan ... a blast of hot wind . . . smote 
him three times," so "violently that he took his book 
and retired within the guest-house. ' ' While he mused 
upon this circumstance, the account says that "he 
felt himself seized by the grasp of a monster . . . and 
fell into the delirium of high fever." Othloh does 
not connect this occurrence with his soul's welfare 
until a week later, when, in the intervals of his malady, 
a mysterious form comes to his bedside and belabors 
him with a scourge. He needs a third warning, how- 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 291 

ever, ere he can bring himself to abandon his Luean 
and complete his conversion. Jerome was similarly- 
accused in a dream of loving Cicero better than 
Christ. 49 

The conversion of Emanuel Swedenborg takes place 
in his middle age — at fifty-five years. It is accom- 
panied by so many visions and voices that the exact mo- 
ment is a little difficult to determine. The ' ' Spiritual 
Diary' ' notes miraculous lights, words heard in the 
early morning, horrors, flames, and talks with spirits. 

The mystic, John Tauler, one night in prayer hears 
a voice by his bodily ears whereat his senses leave him. 
When they return, he finds himself calm and peaceful, 
with fresh understanding. 50 In the famous case of 
Colonel James Gardiner, the subject saw "a visible 
representation of Christ on a cross surrounded by a 
glory while a voice cried, l Oh, sinner, did I suffer for 
thee?' " He sunk down in his armchair, and re- 
mained for a long time insensible. All that Ephraim 
of Edessa 51 tells us in the metrical account of his 
conversion is that he had been quarrelsome and cruel 
to animals, but that a spirit came to him and his heart 
was touched. No doubt the moment was accompanied 
with a mystical manifestation, but we get no details ; 
the early date alone makes the document worth noting. 
It is suggestive to contrast the account given by the 
Indian prophetess, Catherine Wabose, during a con- 
version prepared for by solitude and fasting. She 
saw many points of light, which seemed to approach 
and to prick her; she heard the god's voice and re- 
ceived a prophecy concerning her future son. 

The anchoress Juliana has left a series of chaotic 



292 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

revelations, much like Hildegarde 's, which do not 
mark an exact conversion. Of this she did not seem to 
feel the need. They are mystical revelations from the 
beginning, which is so gradual that no moment's crisis 
or change is remarked. This is an especial character- 
istic of mediaeval religious experience; though not 
universal. The visions which turned Carlo da Sezze 
was one of the Devil coming from hell. 'Jesus ap- 
peared to Baptiste Varani, as a handsome youth with 
curling hair and robed in white and gold, beseeching 
her to take the vows. God's voice speaking to her 
soul moved Antoinette Bourignon, when at eighteen 
she wept and prayed for guidance. The account of 
Joseph Smith, the Mormon, is as follows : "I kneeled 
down and began to offer up the desire of my heart to 
God. ... I had scarcely done so when immediately I 
was seized upon by some power which utterly over- 
came me, and had such an astonishing influence 
over me as to blind my tongue so that I could not 
speak. Thick darkness gathered round me. . . . But 
exciting my powers to call upon God to deliver me . . . 
just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of 
light exactly over my head, above the brightness of 
the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon 
me. ... I found myself delivered from the enemy 
which held me bound. ' ' He then had a further vision 
of two bright personages standing in the air, one of 
which pointed to the other, saying: "This is my be- 
loved Son, hear him ! " A conversion followed ; after 
which Smith fell, unconscious. He adds: "When the 
light had departed, I had no strength"; but he went 
home exultant and satisfied. The effect of the vision 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 293 

was not only to reassure his faith, but it testified to 
the Lord's choice of him as Prophet. In his grand- 
father's case, the light had been a "fiery point"; and 
his aunt had been miraculously cured by a "bright" 
vision of the Saviour. Smith's case is thus found to 
be analogous to much more famous experiences. 

Of Pascal's conversion we know only what was re- 
corded upon the paper which he wore ever after about 
his neck. He had been in bad health for some years. 
One night, unable to sleep, he lay reading the Gospel 
of 'John. He writes these words: "Between 10.30 
in the evening and 12.30— FIRE." Then he adds: 
"Certitude, peace and Joy — !" and again, "Joy!" 
and "Tears of Joy!" There is no accent more poig- 
nant in all religious literature than this brief note 
records. 52 

To the nun Osanna Andreasi, an angel showed the 
universe; while a voice within her heart uttered the 
words : ' ' Life and Death consist in loving God. ' ' To 
the Ranter, Joseph Salmon, the voice said: "Arise and 
depart, for this is not your rest ! " He adds, quaintly : 
"I was suddenly struck dead to all my wonted enjoy- 
ments. . . . When my three dayes or set time was ex- 
pired, I begann to feele some quickening comforte 
within me . . . the gravestone was rolled away and I 
set at liberty from these deep and dark retires; out 
I came with a most serene and cheerful countenance 
into a most heavenly and divine enjoyment." 

The words which conveyed a conviction of joy to 
J. Hudson-Taylor were, "It is finished"; in which the 
power of a suggestion is very plainly indicated. The 
Reverend Gardiner Spring, after much wrestling, 



294 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

found "the Word precious and refreshing." Uber- 
tino da Casale beheld in his sleep an ' ' alarming vision 
of God," just before Angela of Foligno had shown him 
the true way; and writes: "All my lukewarmness of 
soul as well as my corporal infirmities disappeared." 
The famous dream of Jerome has already received our 
attention; we have noted that, when he is later ac- 
cused by Rufinus of still reading, "my Tully," his 
defence is that he cannot be bound by a promise given 
in a dream! This conversion, therefore, is unusual 
in its effect on the mind of the converted subject. 
Rolle of Hampole beautifully describes his conversion 
in the chapel where he sat at prayer. He heard strains 
of music, and felt "a merry heat and unknown. . . . 
Forsooth," he continues, "my thought continually to 
mirth of song was changed. ' ' This lovely conjunction 
of piety and music was also felt by Jonathan Edwards, 
whose own tranquilly- joyful confidence in God's love 
is very different from the terror he felt obliged to 
preach to others. ' ' To soliloquize in a singing voice, ' ' 
was his impulse and delight, and this brought about 
"a sweet complacency in God." One vision came 
to him in the woods. "The person of Christ," he 
writes, "appeared ineffably excellent"; and caused 
him to weep for joy. 

Startling dreams and visions beset Joanna South- 
cott, who had one struggle with Satan lasting ten 
days, during which she was beaten black and blue 
ere she obtained peace. An illness due to meningitis 
caused many devils to torment poor little Sister 
Therese of the Holy Child ; but a vision of the Virgin 
announced her recovery and conversion. A similar 53 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 295 

vision, emerging from a black cross in the Church of 
Aracoeli, brought about the very rapid conversion of 
the young Jew, Alphonse de Ratisbonne. The nun, 
Veronique Giuliani, seemed to think that she needed 
no conversion; for Christ himself offered her the 
chalice of the passion and crowned her with his crown 
of thorns. Carre de Montgeron was one of those con- 
verted at the tomb of the Archdeacon Paris. There 
were so many of these, and so much disturbance re- 
sulted, that the authorities were forced to close the 
cemetery to the crowds. Carre remained there, kneel- 
ing, for four hours. Maria d' Agreda was never con- 
verted ; but she obtained relief from despair and temp- 
tations by writing down her visions. A. C. Emmerich 
also took the veil after a vision during which she, too, 
was crowned with thorns. 

Bulman Merswin before conversion suffered "the 
pains of hell" for all of three years. "A great and 
superhuman joy" followed for a brief space. With 
Gertrude More, the struggle to renounce was long and 
bitter, until, as she writes, she was "almost desper- 
ate"; and it was made the harder for her by the un- 
sympathetic and harsh treatment of her director. 
Under another guidance, "more by quietness than 
force," she found herself so calmed that she wondered. 
The influence of the director in these Catholic cases 
can hardly be overestimated, since the isolation and 
sensitiveness of these cloistered persons renders it of 
particular importance. We know the tragedy to which 
it led in the story of the priest Urbain Grandier and 
the nuns of Loudun ; and it is a marked factor in the 
example of Jeanne de St. Mathieu Deleloe. Vowed to 



296 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

the Blessed Virgin from her infancy, this girl of six- 
teen entered joyously upon her convent-life. Her 
happiness brings her a keen sense of God's love and 
favor; she sees the Holy Mother blessing her with a 
smile, and the mystery of the Trinity is revealed to her 
in a vision. But the convent-superior and her director 
both told her that she was presumptuous and tempted 
by the Devil ; and at once the visions turned horrible, 
painful, and perverse. Assailed by temptations both 
carnal and blasphemous, she undergoes every emotion 
of horror and agony; is converted, and reconverted, 
amid relapses and diabolic visitations of a cruelly tor- 
menting kind. 

The reader has already observed that in the me- 
diaeval cases, the mystical and visionary manifesta- 
tions are nearer to the normal life; and the conver- 
sion-crisis itself is less easily denned. How should 
Gertrude or Hildegarde or Mechtilde, come to re- 
gard the sights and sounds, with which their ec- 
stasies were rewarded, as indicating any especial crisis ? 
Most of their companions were similarly favored. The 
Holy Child himself gaily awoke the inmates of Mech- 
tilde 's convent at dawn ; while seraphim waving lights 
preceded them into the chapel. Such frequent mani- 
festation brought no feeling of crucial significance; 
and thus conversion in the meaning of new life there 
was not — all these emotions and their attendant phe- 
nomena were but stages in the via mystica. 

Not so the conversions of the group next to be con- 
sidered. To them, this mystical moment possessed 
every element of fear and of crisis, heightened by un- 
expectedness and bizarrerie. The seventeenth and 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 297 

eighteenth, century pietists were many degrees away 
from the mediaeval mystics ; upon the former already 
an active, material world impressed its complete ob- 
jectivity, so that for them voices and visions and devils 
possessed additional horror beside the supernatural. 
They voice this horror by their intensity. One hears 
of Billy Bray shouting, "Come on, thou devil !" and 
afterwards dancing and leaping in praise of his vic- 
tory. Equally vehement was Jerry McAuley when he 
seemed to feel a hand laid on his shoulder, and a voice 
assuring him of forgiveness. The evangelist Jacob 
Knapp felt himself actually to be sinking into hell 
when Jesus descended to save him. The visual and 
auditory manifestations of the Friends and Methodists 
partake in character of the stern sense of sin, pre- 
vailing among these groups. Thus, Margaret Lucas 's 
account states that the truth seized upon her in a 
"lively'' manner; after she had "cursed the Lord 
and defied Heaven" by a Voice which rung in her 
soul. Mildred Ratcliff was in meeting when she felt 
a hand laid on her shoulder, while a voice said: 
' ' Thou hast no business here. ' ' This marks the turn- 
ing-point to a mind much exercised about the state 
of irreligion in France! To young Stephen Grellet, 
at twenty-two, "walking in the fields, my mind being 
under no sort of religious concern nor excitement, 
there came suddenly an awful voice proclaiming, 
'Eternity, Eternity!' " The empty fields were the 
scene of many a conflict. Here Anna Braithwaite ob- 
served that "a flood of light seemed to shine on my 
understanding, ... my heart was humbled." 
Samuel Neale combated with the Devil until his shirt 



298 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

was wringing wet. Two ploughmen, Dames Naylor 
and Myles Halhead, heard the voice, just as did Tol- 
stoi's Levin, while at their work. The first says: "I 
rejoyced and obeyed.' ' The other speaks of "this 
voice — this heavenly voice did make my heart leap 
with Joy ! ' ' Similarly, it is an intelligible voice, which 
causes Mary Hagger to kneel down under ' * a contrit- 
ing impression. ' ' Thomas Story, a man who notes 
minutely every operation of mind and change of mood, 
is plunged in darkness, when he hears a voice within 
say, "Thy will be done,'' and immediately is calmed 
and relieved. Much more explicit is the voice to Jane 
Hoskins, for, during a sore fit of sickness, it says to 
her: "If I restore thee, go to Pennsylvania." Later 
on, after spending a penitential season with godly sor- 
row, it directs her to be obedient and she is once again 
eased. But when the voice bids her to speak in meet- 
ing, she resists, and is overwhelmed with horror until 
she yields. 

A vision of a black man at the crisis, followed 
by dreams of him, directly caused the conversion of 
T. R. Gates. Dazzling lights add 'their warning. 
David Brainerd describes the warning influence as 
"a glory unspeakable !' ' On the contrary, Luther 
Rice feels as if descending into hell, and is quieted 
only by signing his name to a blank sheet of paper for 
God to fill up with his destiny. David Marks and 
Elias Smith were both stunned by bad falls in the 
woods, and immediately were possessed by the fear of 
hell. In both cases this is succeeded by a beautiful 
serenity; the latter felt it to so great an extent that 
he sang aloud. We have already mentioned the 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 299 

visionary terrors which beset James H. Linsley just 
before conversion, in which infernal spirits and devil- 
tigers take part. The conversion itself was brought 
about by his cry, "Lord, I believe' ' — at which, in the 
twinkling of an eye, he is perfectly calm and joyful. 

The visions in many Methodist cases are fantastic. 
That of John Haime names a "creature" flying over 
his head. Another, Thomas Payne, sees two beasts; 
one a large bear-like animal ; when he called it Satan, 
and bade it go, it disappeared. The light which Mary 
Fletcher beholds, she describes rather as steady than 
dazzling; a voice whispers: "Thou shalt walk with 
me in white." John Furz feels a freezing cold run 
through his every vein, while he is kneeling in the 
garden overwhelmed with agonies of terror. It is a 
still, small voice which assures him of pardon, and im- 
mediately darkness turns to light and he obtains per- 
manent relief. 

The crucial suggestion may take various shapes. 
Although Richard Whatcoat was overwhelmed with 
darkness and could take no rest by day or night, yet 
one day, while reading, he fixes his attention on a 
certain verse, and the cloud rolls away. He then gets 
sleep, which he much needed. Upon B. Hibbard, 
Jesus appeared to look down compassionately, and he 
cried out: " Glory! Glory!" Light shone suddenly 
at midnight on Jacob Young, and he says: "I arose 
from the floor praising God." To Thomas Taylor, 
Christ appeared as if on the cross, with his vesture 
dipped in blood. Thomas Hanson writes that during 
prayer, "my heart, with a kind sweet struggle melted 
into the hand of God." It is in meeting that Thomas 



300 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

"Walsh was "pierced as with darts and arrows"; and 
there he is finally delivered and breaks out into tears 
of joy and love. John Prickard feels heaven in his 
heart; while Peter Jaco, during a solitary walk, was 
impressed with the suggestion that Jesus died for the 
vilest sinner, and at once his soul was filled with light 
and love. 

The burden of Thomas Olivers falls from him upon 
the shining of a star. Thomas Lee says that "God 
broke in on my soul in a wonderful manner. ' ' Mat- 
thias Joyce has ever more horrors than peace ; yet once 
during prayer he thinks that he is sanctified. While 
poor John Gratton was alone on the moor pulling 
heath, he felt something " swift and precious and 
knows it is the spirit." Thereupon, he has a vision 
of a people, "poor and despised, the Lord's own"; 
and at once joins the Quakers. William Williams was 
converted in meeting; and writes that it was indeed 
' ' an awfully solemn time. ' ' 

An assurance of pardon is often the only suggestion 
that is needed to bring harmony once more to what 
Hamlet calls "this distracted globe"; but it is not 
always so. Fear is sometimes more powerful than for- 
giveness ; and suggestion takes the form of a command. 
To Richard Rodda, it was declared, ' ' Thy sins are for- 
given thee." But the voice which comforted John 
Pawson was not so encouraging to Freeborn Garret- 
son — it was an awful voice and cried : "Awake, sinner, 
for you are not prepared to die!" Such a voice also 
bids William Jackson give up everything but Christ. 
Matthew Arnold has made the vision of Sampson 
Staniforth the property of all literature. He is on 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III SOI 

sentry-duty, when he kneels and prays, clouds open 
exceedingly bright, and he sees Christ upon the Cross. 
Lorenzo Dow avows that his manifestations have come 
to him in dreams; though these are dreams of hell, 
and so hideous that they caused him to cry out : "Lord, 
I give up, I submit, I yield!" So also Richard Wil- 
liams, a surgeon, during a sudden delirium, suddenly 
screams: "Lord, I come!" and is immediately calmed. 
On the other hand, David Nitschman has only to say 
to himself: "I will suppose there be a God," whence 
he is immediately filled with a strange sweetness. 
Henry Ward Beecher's peace comes to his soul "like 
the bursting-forth of Spring." The Divine voice in 
"emphatic" accents moves Granville Moody. A con- 
version following the Holy Sacrament, is the experi- 
ence of the modern nun, Mary of the Divine Heart, 
who, however, carefully specifies that the voice nam- 
ing her "Spouse" was wholly "interior." 

The uniformity of effect in these cases will not have 
escaped the reader. Confirmation of their evidence is 
to be found in those lives and legends whose non-auto- 
biographical character does not bring them, strictly 
speaking, within the scope of this book. Among these 
is that of Catherine of Genoa's conversion, as told in 
her "Vita" on familiar lines. 54 After intense dis- 
tress for months, she told her sister that she felt dis- 
inclined to confession ; but yielded to the other 's advice 
and knelt before the priest. While in this position, 
she was penetrated by a feeling of all-purifying love, 
and in a transport, cried out to herself: "No more 
sins — no more sins ! ' ' Her health throughout all her 
life was subject to strange fluctuations; she felt con- 



802 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

stantly as though she were burning up, and absorbed 
her food so rapidly that she could not get sufficient 
sustenance therefrom. 

Long ere this, the reader will have commented upon 
a seeming omission; and in truth we must delay no 
further to examine what is probably the most impor- 
tant of all conversions — the conversion of Paul. 55 
His experience, in the three accounts which remain 
to us, offers an apparent contradiction to the law which 
psychology has formulated for the government of such 
cases. For this reason, if for no other, Paul's case is 
the mainstay of those writers and preachers who hold 
that conversion is, in itself, proof of the existence of 
the supernatural. They point also in support of this 
belief to one or two other cases — to Augustin, for 
instance; but they rely on none with so much confi- 
dence as on that of Paul. Here is a case, they repeat, 
for which reason cannot account, nor can comparison 
explain. The subject is a young man of practical 
energy, neither humble nor illiterate, familiar with 
Greek philosophy, and already bestirring himself in 
the world of affairs. Moreover, his mind is filled with 
antagonism to Christianity ; he is on his way from per- 
secuting the Christians in one place to persecute 
them in another. His conversion occurs at midday; 
with no premonitory doubts or darkness. He is smit- 
ten without warning to the earth; God's voice in ac- 
cusing question thunders in his ears ; he rises a Chris- 
tian, perhaps the greatest of Christians. 

Now, the isolation of any fact in his experience from 
comparison with other facts, is enough at once for 
the subject to infer a miracle. To the savage, the first 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III SOS 

white man he sees is a god ; the first gun he hears fired 
is due to supernatural force. He has only to behold 
other white men, to hear other guns, and what was 
miraculous becomes without delay both natural and 
hostile. The system of scrupulous isolation has been 
applied for centuries to all events and persons men- 
tioned in the Bible ; and nowhere to more purpose than 
in the example of Paul. As an influence, it extends to 
modern times, to higher criticism, and to rationalistic 
interpretation. Thus, even Renan 56 is to be found at- 
tributing Paul's vision and the blinding light, to a 
thunderstorm and a simultaneous attack of ophthal- 
mia. Any superficial comparison of Paul's conversion 
with other conversions, makes a thunderstorm hypoth- 
esis wholly superfluous. The vision of Jesus, the voice, 
the dazzling light, are characteristic of this type of eon- 
version, indoors or out, storm or calm. Yet the great 
French critic is surely right when he insists that in the 
history of an epoch where only an ensemble can be 
certain, 57 where details must be more or less doubtful 
following the legendary nature of the documents, — 
then hypothesis becomes indispensable. In this par- 
ticular instance, there is extant a sufficient body of ma- 
terial on which needful hypothesis may be based. 

Paul was an essentially personal religious leader. 
From his speeches repeated in Acts, 58 from his letters, 
we obtain personal matter of incontestable authenticity. 
Omitting any references to the disputed Epistles, 59 
there yet remains ample material for a picture of this 
man. Tradition describes Paul as slight and insignifi- 
cant in appearance. 60 His constitution, though evi- 
dently wiry, was yet not healthy. On this fact he 



304 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

dwells repeatedly, even alluding to chronic infirmity. 61 
No doubt the reader will have suggested to him the 
physique and the endurance of "Wesley; yet it must 
not be forgotten that Wesley's from the first was a 
nature distinctly non-mystical. Paul very positively 
assures us, on the contrary, that he was subject to 
visionary and mystical experiences. 62 

These facts show that there was nothing in Paul's 
character or constitution to remove him beyond the 
pale of comparison with other cases. That he was 
a zealous persecutor of Christians does not indicate 
any condition of mind unique in the history of conver- 
sion. 63 Alphonse de Ratisbonne, if not a persecutor 
of Catholics, was at least violently anti-Catholic at the 
moment when he was converted: Paul Lowengard 
was violently pro-Jewish at the moment he was turned 
from Judaism: Uriel d'Acosta experienced successive 
conversions always in a state of extreme antagonism 
to the faith he was about to adopt : and James Lack- 
ington, Richard Williams, and others, display similar 
attitudes. The essential condition is, not that a man 
shall be favorably inclined toward any form of reli- 
gion, but simply that the subject of religion, in se, shall 
be uppermost in his mind, that his thoughts and actions 
shall be chiefly occupied with it. And this essential 
condition we see Paul eminently fulfils. It is the mass 
of emotion generated in a man which converts him, 
rather than the special form which that emotion causes 
his ideas to assume; since action and reaction follow 
one another in human thoughts as inevitably as they 
do in human affairs. 

Paul, by his own account, was ripe for a reaction. 64 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 305 

His letters indicate that he was a man of warm heart 
and tender sympathies; and it is impossible that the 
misery caused by his own bigotry should not at mo- 
ments have weighed upon him. If he does not dis- 
tinctly say so, it is perhaps because, like many another 
convert and confessant, he allows his pre-converted 
state to loom very black, that his converted state may 
shine by comparison. 65 

But it is by no means certain that he does not in- 
directly say so; that he is so sure of himself as his 
commentators would have us believe. They have made 
very much of Paul's confidence; his certainty that he 
was right in his persecution of the Christians. This 
is their entire foundation for the assumption that his 
conversion was sui generis, because there was no pre- 
vious state of doubt, no darkness to be dispelled, no 
melancholy to be lifted. None of your predisposing 
causes existed in this case, they argue; only the hand 
of God could smite the scoffer, in his mid-career, as 
Paul was smitten. 

Well, there is probably no need to repeat that the 
character of Paul, as it is revealed to us in his letters, 
is that of a zealot, — a fanatic, if one will, but one with 
a warm and tender heart. The evidence of character, 
therefore, is strong for a reaction, ere yet he started 
on his memorable journey to Damascus. Moreover, 
what are we to understand by that phrase which the 
voice uttered immediately after the accusing ques- 
tion ? ' * It is hard for thee, ' ' so the text runs, * ' to kick 
against the pricks. ' * 66 

Renan 67 explains the phrase as meaning Paul's un- 
willingness; he is an ox forced forward, willy-nilly, 



306 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

by his Master's goad. Students have found that the 
words "to kick against the goad/' came from a 
proverb then in common use. But in this connection 
they surely have also a metaphorical significance; 
what can they mean if not the "goad" of conscience? 
"It is hard for thee to kick against thy conscience — 
thy struggle is over — " says the voice, just as it said, 
"Surrender!" to Joseph Hoag; or, "Thy will be 
done ! " to Thomas Story, or to another, ' ' I have given 
thee the victory. ' ' In more general terms, the strain- 
ing doubt of self, which filled Paul's mind when he 
set forth upon a task which moved him with increas- 
ing distaste and horror, suddenly resolved into a defi- 
nite shape, with the appeal and the suggestion of a 
turn to Christianity. The first suggestion puts him 
definitely in the wrong by a question he cannot answer, 
for he knew not why he persecuted Jesus. The second 
suggestion sweeps away forever all obstructions to the 
new current of energy, to the new faith, by showing 
him that he cannot resist, that he must go forward 
upon a new path, spurred by that force within of 
which he knows not, the power of his own character, of 
his own genius. As for the other phenomena of this 
conversion; comparison, as we have seen, does away 
with the need of any naturalistic explanation, such as 
Kenan's, of the ophthalmia and the thunderstorm. 68 
Similar cases are to be found in our list where the 
subject was not in an Arabian desert at noon. Paul's 
after experiences, the healing visit of Ananias, all 
link him to that group to whom the vision and the 
voice bring conversion, but a complete peace and as- 
surance do not come till a few days later. 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 307 

The subsequent progress of Paul's religious feeling, 
the development of his character, follow the leading 
of his energetic will. He is one of those in whom the 
newly generated force becomes at once objective. His 
organizing genius seeks a suitable outlet ; and like Au- 
gustin, like Wesley, his personal problem once settled, 
it does not rise again, and he turns his mind to other 
things. Thus, one reads little further about his per- 
sonal experiences ; his letters draw upon the past only 
during his concern to make his belief prevail. 69 It is 
interesting to find that from repetition his account of 
the heavenly voice and its command grows elaborate 
and detailed. He believes that it commands him to 
do this and that; and, as he tells Agrippa, he was 
"not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." Very 
shortly after his conversion, indeed, Paul ceased to 
tread any longer upon the ' ' mystical way ' ' ; and that 
he began to concern himself more with the welfare of 
the souls of others than with his own soul, is a fact 
to which we owe the establishment of Christianity. 

Comparative study thus destroys the theory that 
Paul's experience was unique. He is linked by it to 
many an ardent and devout soul. Analysis of his nar- 
rative disposes also of the idea that the vision operated 
upon a sceptical mind. "La condition du miracle," 
says Renan, 'Vest la credulite du temoin." 70 True 
it is in every sense that no miracle is possible with- 
out faith; and the case of Paul is no exception. His 
mind may not have been prepared, yet his emo- 
tions were. He may not himself have been conscious 
how much the fortitude of Christian victims had af- 
fected him toward their leader ; yet he was so affected. 



308 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Full of doubt, of wonder, of dismay, of self-loathing, 
these conflicting sensations pricked his soul until he 
could resist no longer; the voice spoke; he listened 
and obeyed. 

Paul's value as a character is not lessened when 
he is found to be one of a group. As a human being 
he is subject to human law ; and nothing can be gained 
by trying to place his ease beyond that law. To a 
broad mind, the beauty of human achievement is not 
clouded when it is found to be the result of order and 
of nature. Paul's work stands out as great, and as 
loyal a work, as though it were just what he believed it 
to be. If one of a group, then they are, indeed, a 
steadfast and a splendid band who lead humanity, 
having him at their head. 

The present writer's view of the meaning of the 
words, ' ' It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks, ' ' 
is not without support from Pauline scholars. Ken- 
dall 71 says of the phrase : ' ' This throws an interesting 
light on the state of Saul 's mind before conversion : it 
seems he was already stifling conscientious doubts and 
scruples." The same explanation is furnished by 
Sadler, 72 and by Campbell, 78 who adds: " Conscience 
was at work ... he was kicking against conviction. ' ' 
Pfleiderer 74 declares plainly that the goad was the 
painful doubt which Paul felt as to this persecution of 
the Christians. In ' ' St. Paul, ' ' 75 by the Reverend J. 
R. Cohn, the writer thinks that a purely psychological 
explanation of Paul's change will ever remain unsatis- 
factory, but that the "goad" 76 doubtless referred to 
the influence of God upon Paul's pre-converted mind, 
the urging him forward, as it were, against his will. 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 309 

On the other hand, Meyer 77 says, very positively : 
"The conversion of Saul does not appear, on an ac- 
curate consideration of the three narratives," which 
agree in their main points, to have had "the way 
psychologically prepared for it by scruples of con- 
science as to his persecuting proceedings"; and this 
startling assertion is capped by the additional re- 
mark that in view of Paul's entirely pure character 
such scruples are extremely improbable ! 

Doubt of one's own conduct would not seem to our 
ethical ideas, to interfere with essential purity of mo- 
tive; but this view of Meyer's is shared by Wrede, 78 
and substantially by Dr. Lumby, 79 the editor of the 
Cambridge Bible. The latter will not allow the 
"pricks" to have been those of conscience. Both 
Cloag 80 and Conybeare and Howson, 81 interpret the 
"goad" expression as in the nature of a threat or 
warning, "Take care, Paul! lest worse befall thee" — 
and so forth. 

Neither McGiffert 82 nor Sabatier 83 in treating of 
Paul's experience, make any especial reference to the 
phrase in question. Neither does Harnack, 84 although 
he adds the powerful weight of his assurance to the 
trustworthiness and authenticity of the entire narra- 
tive. He says 85 that Paul was really blind, but gave 
the incident a religious significance. Harnack omits 
any account of the conversion proper, which is treated 
fully by McGiffert and by Sabatier. The former re- 
marks that Paul saw his own conversion as a sudden, 
abrupt, and unheralded event; which state, adds Dr. 
McGiffert, 86 is psychologically inconceivable. That 
this commentator should ignore the very words 



310 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

which furnish the key-note to the riddle, is perhaps 
less surprising when we find him observing "that 
Paul gives no detailed account of his conversion ! ' ' 

In very truth, the tendency of the human intellect 
to look for the complex, the tortuous, and the artificial 
explanation, in place of the simple and natural expla- 
nation, of human words or experiences, is nowhere so 
marked as in Biblical exegesis. It is to be found on 
all sides, among the orthodox and the heterodox, the 
emotionalist and the rationalist. McGiffert can say 
in face of Acts rx, xxi, xxvi, that Paul gave no 
detailed account of his conversion; Cloag can say 
that the vision near Damascus was "a strong proof 
of the divinity of Christianity"; from the oppo- 
site viewpoint, Renan offers us an extraordinarily 
apt conjunction of ophthalmia, with a thunder- 
storm; Binet-Sangle formulates for Paul an elaborate 
diagnosis of epilepsy, and Sabatier actually doubts 
whether Paul ever took the vision itself other than 
symbolically! "With the theories of the medical- 
materialist in general we have to do more fully else- 
where, — in their extreme form they jump at con- 
clusions even more wildly than do the early Fathers, 
— but an attitude of mind, such as is shown by Saba- 
tier, simply causes in the reader a paralysis of won- 
der. That any one could so misread the character of 
Paul — essentially direct, forceful, energetic, and ob- 
jective^ — is even more remarkable than the deliberate 
ignoring of his plain, reiterated statement: "Have 
I not seen Jesus Christ, our Lord?" 87 This is the 
same influence which we have seen at work upon Au- 
gustin, declaring that he did not do what he expressly 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 311 

states lie did. To take as symbolism Paul's simple 
convincing narrative of what he saw and felt and did, 
is to accomplish a feat of mental gymnastics even 
greater than would be required to believe that Bacon 
wrote Shakspere: it is to make riddles where none 
exist. There is to Sabatier an "obscure enigma " in 
the whole of Paul's experience, caused by the slight 
variations in the three accounts; but what in truth 
is more natural, more simple, more human and con- 
vincing, than just such variations ? 88 Far more 
suspicious would it seem were these three accounts 
found to be, word for word, identical, when we know 
Paul described his experiences more than once, and to 
more than one audience. What is more natural than 
his introduction into it, as an explanation, of the 
ancient Hebrew proverb of the ox and the goad, to 
describe his own bitter attempt to escape the perpetual 
challenge of his conscience? 

It is natural that the more striking mystical phe- 
nomena of the religious life should be recorded with 
more detail than is given to the non-mystical. For a 
certain number of persons the readjustment is grad- 
ual, the clouds slowly disperse. There is another 
group among whom the actual moment of their con- 
version is hardly to be distinguished from among a 
series of similar slight crises — no one especially 
marked or noteworthy. There are men like Wesley, 
to whom the process is fulfilled in a space of calm; 
men like Calvin, who obtain peace gradually, but after 
a conflict "non sine gemitu ac lacrymis." The thun- 
ders of many a sermon have served to precipitate 



312 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

the crucial instant for the attentive hearer. The 
stillness of meeting has brought it upon as many- 
others. The glories of sunset, the pure emptiness of 
dawn, the rage of a storm at sea, has each in turn been 
the scene of a crisis. Books, and not always great 
books, have had their effect. A pamphlet in a work- 
ingman's cottage called "The Plain Man's Pathway to 
Heaven" eased the torment of poor John Bunyan. 
A little volume called "The Flowers of the Saints" 
turned the thoughts of the wounded Loyola from 
knightly deeds to heaven. The influence of Law's 
"Serious Call" upon eighteenth century England, is 
incalculable; it stands behind the whole Evangelical 
movement, and many an one beside Thomas Scott 
found it "a very uncomfortable book." An emo- 
tional and creative imagination, on the other hand, 
may be so possessed by the spectacle of life itself as 
to find men's problems much more poignant than 
men's creations. Upon reading Tolstoi's "Confes- 
sions," no one can fail to be struck with the fact 
that books meant comparatively little to him. Simi- 
larly, in the world of religious thoughts, tremendous as 
was the effect of Augustin and of a Kempis, of Law 
and of Bunyan, yet we find religious movements and 
religious bodies unaffected as a whole by any reading. 
Out of the journals of fifty-three members of the 
Society of Friends, not five owed their conversion, or 
backsliding, or change of thought, to the direct in- 
fluence of any book whatever. It was rather the 
voice of Fox or of Whitefield, or the personal exhorta- 
tion of those "ancient servants of Christ," John Aud- 
land, Stephen Crisp, or John Woolman. Although in 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 313 

the religious struggle it is often a book which first 
turns the confessant to the way of peace, yet we look 
in vain among the Quaker records for any such ac- 
knowledgment. The phrases they use are wholly 
other; solitude tells upon this one, a friend's sudden 
illness or sudden death on that ; 89 in the pregnant 
stillness of meeting, God's voice is heard to speak; 
discussion and prayer with devout companions fol- 
low; then, perhaps by means of a "lively preacher," 
the heart is "broken and tendered'' and the impres- 
sion completed. The circumstance is more noteworthy 
in regard to Friends than it is with the other bodies 
of which it is also characteristic, since they are the 
nearer to our day, and to the day of print. More- 
over, they do not lack literature, they have their 
apologists; but Barclay's "Apology" seems to have 
been read after the turning-point oftener than before 
it was reached. The conversion itself is almost never 
accompanied by the reading of any religious volume 
save the Bible, and, curiously enough, the latter seems 
rather to perplex than to calm the travailing spirit 
until the full conversion is accomplished. Some per- 
sons acknowledge frankly that they cannot tell just 
when they were converted ; they know only that they 
have been. And this brings us at once to the point 
of questioning their belief. 

The subject of reaction and relapse, of the dura- 
tion of the emotional process and its final termi- 
nation, has received little attention at the hands 
of the student. What follows after conversion? 
We know what should follow if the result is all 
that the subject expects — if it be a veritable crisis, 



314 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Peace, permanent and helpful, new activities, the 
world wearing a new face, the life of the spirit 
vigorous and benign, these are what one should look 
for. Perhaps the ideal result is well expressed by 
Luther, who writes of his religious feeling very 
simply, but very deeply. "I," he says, "out of my 
own experience am able to witness that Jesus Christ 
is the true God. I know full well what the name of 
Jesus has done for me. I have often been so near 
death that I thought verily now must I die — because 
I taught His word . . . but always He mercifully put 
life into me and refreshed and comforted me. ' ' 90 
These words are all that the convert could ask for; 
and yet how few can, after their ' 'turning-about, ' ' 
truly repeat them ! If this conversion means all that 
the suffering subject expects from it, — if the misery, 
the torment, the hellish sights and sounds, the dread, 
the sleeplessness, the wasting-away, are but his pay- 
ment for peace or security, then the record should 
read of durable benefit and health. 

The advocates of mysticism make much out of the 
tokens of ecstasy and joy belonging to that state ; and 
never tire of quoting the raptures of the saint. If we 
would be fair, we must not ignore them. The real 
beauty of Jonathan Edwards's exaltation; Suso's 
"flame of fire which made his heart all burning with 
intense love"; the "inexpressible ravishment of 
Henry Alline' , ; the "merry heat and unknown" of 
Rolle, and his prayer turning into music ; Salimbene 's 
and David Nitschman's sense of great sweetness — all 
these feelings are very real, and in true contrast with 
the pre-converted state of gloom and sin. 91 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 315 

Another type of joy is furnished by such eases of 
misinterpreted observation as Eobert Blair's "joy 
that was unspeakable and glorious" after partaking 
of the milk-posset. Nor is modern science willing to 
accept as due to spiritual causes that outbreak of 
sexual feeling among the cloistered women of the 
Middle Ages, which led so often to their speaking of 
their Lord in the most extraordinary terms. Christ's 
"familiar interviews" with Marie de l'lncarnation, 
his "incredible intimacy" with Gertrude of Eisleben; 
his various "espousals" with Teresa, Mary of the 
Angels, Maria d'Agreda, Angela da Foligno, Mary 
of the Divine Heart, Antoinette Bourignon — are not 
nowadays to be attributed to mere symbolistic ex- 
travagances of phrase. In the cases of A. C. Em- 
merich, "qui osa lutter avec Dieu," writes her naif 
director, * ' dans un langage dont la sainte et amoureuse 
folie aurait pu blesser les oreilles profanes"; or Bap- 
tista Vernazza, who longed "to devour God"; or 
Antoinette Bourignon, who felt that her soul had be- 
come entirely a part of the Divine; the sexual idea 
has assumed a character of such excessive egotism as 
to become wholly unbalanced. Knowing what we 
know, can a mystical advocate confidently uphold to- 
day, as advisable or praiseworthy, such raptures as 
these? 

But of course it is never the mystic who doubts 
his own extreme favor with the higher powers ; 92 and 
it is not for the converted to doubt the fact of the 
conversion. Yet Augustin himself wrote "that the 
love of God is acquired by knowledge of the senses, 
and by the exercise of reason." Jonathan Edwards, 93 



816 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

r 

with all his credulity, expressed the same doubt. 
"There have, indeed," he writes, "been some few 
instances of impressions on persons' imaginations that 
have been something mysterious to me . . . for, 
though it has been exceeding evident . . . that they 
had indeed a great sense of the spiritual excellency 
of divine things, yet I have not been able to satisfy 
myself whether these imaginary ideas have been more 
than could naturally arise from their spiritual sense 
of things." 

Certain cases record this phase of feeling. James 
Fraser of Brae observes that he was constantly ex- 
pecting more extraordinary effects and influences from 
his conversion than actually happened to him. James 
Lackington comments on his several conversions in the 
words: "Nothing is more common than to see man- 
kind run from one extreme to the other, which was 
my case." The saintly John Livingstone does not 
remember that he had any especial moment of con- 
version, "or that I was much cast down or lift up." 
It is interesting that his worst attack of terror at the 
wrath of God should be in his sleep, and that, though 
it seemed unbearable, he did not awaken: "I sleeped 
'til the morning." The soul of Thomas Mitchell, he 
writes, was "simply set at liberty." Thomas Ruther- 
ford says that the divine power which moved him had 
about it "nothing terrible or alarming . . . but . . . 
at once solemnized, composed and elevated the fac- 
ulties of my soul." There are a number of persons 
among the Friends, who, after a struggle, simply 
observe that they became "settled in the power of the 
Lord." 94 Unquestionably, Martin Luther was also 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 817 

thus " settled"; he laid claim to no revelations, but 
once certain of his path, pursued it, putting the 
whole weight of his robust and powerful personality 
against existing abuse. He is careful to the very 
end to say that he was "not an heretic but a schis- 
matic." John Wesley cannot note any actual mo- 
ment of victory. "His heart is warmed" during a 
certain prayer-meeting, and the crisis seems over. It 
took David Marks eighteen months to be sure of con- 
version; Bishop Ashbel Green is doubtful whether 
his own sanctification was ever complete. E. N. Kirk 
remarks that the phenomena attending his crisis in- 
cluded a light which, he thinks, superstition would 
have made more of than he does. John Angell James 
had "no pungent conviction ... no great and rapid 
transitions of feeling." The "saving change" which 
overtook Samuel Hopkins he was long in recognizing 
as conversion ; yet finally concludes it must have been. 
B. Hibbard doubts if the experience through which 
he passed really was conversion ; and so does William 
Capers. It was during an illness that Christian 
David became convinced his sins were forgiven, but 
he does not know any more than just the fact. In 
the same manner Count Schouvaloff changes his faith ; 
and Samuel Neale, a Quaker, believes firmly in a 
gradual process of conversion. 

These instances are sufficient to show that in many 
cases the security attained by conversion is but a 
relative term. Spiritual, like worldly, crises may 
diffuse themselves over a long period of time, so that 
only upon looking back can one estimate the distance 
he has travelled. 



318 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

From the conf essays' own accounts many of the 
reactions following conversion are as violent as 
though no conversion had ever taken place. To re- 
peat here the names of all who fall back into despair, 
after they believe their peace and pardon have been 
won, would be to reprint practically the entire case- 
list — so universal is the experience. Jacob Knapp, 
the Baptist preacher, insisted for this reason on fre- 
quent re-conversion. Full examination into this ques- 
tion of relapse tends to throw a new light upon the 
whole subject. 

In the first place, it will be noticed that among 
most of the earlier mystics, conversion is rather the 
starting-point of their agony than its culmination. 
With Teresa, Suso, Eulman Merswin, Angela da 
Foligno, Jeanne de St. Mathieu Deleloe, Mesdames 
Guyon and Chantal, Mary of the Divine Heart, An- 
toinette Bourignon, Ubertino da Casale, Jerome — 
the progress is steady, after their conversion, toward 
periods of darkness, horror, and despair. Some of 
these examples (or at least so many of them as are 
cloistered, or recluse) seem in their proper persons 
to bear out that penetrating observation of Luther 
that "The human heart is like a mill-stone in a mill, 
when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds 
and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, 
it still grinds on, but then 'tis itself it grinds and 
wears away!" 95 

It is after she received the "coup de la Grace" 
that the young abbess Angelique Arnauld was plunged 
into terror. ' ' How many woes, ' ' cries Bishop Anselm 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 319 

in his "Oratio Meditativo," "and woes on the heel of 
woes ! . . . Shudder, oh, my soul, and faint, my mind, 
and break, my heart! Whither dost thou thrust me, 
oh, my sin, whither dost thou drive me, oh, my God?" 
J. J. Olier, during the latter part of his life, had a 
dark period of shame and depression, quite as though 
conversion were not. John Newton passed from "an 
awfully mad career" into exaggerated asceticism, not 
once but many times. Carlo da Sezze, long after 
his saintly convictions had received assurance from 
on high, had violent reactions. One attack of mel- 
ancholy and doubt lasted for months. Many such 
dark times fell upon Marie de l'lncarnation. Bap- 
tiste Varani had demoniac temptations producing 
black horrors of despair for as long as two years on a 
stretch; and Jeanne de St. M. Deleloe for more than 
a year. Abbot Othloh has many relapses. On the 
other hand, M. M. Alacoque, like A. C. Emmerich, 
has no reactions, no doubts ; her assurance is so com- 
plete that it gives the effect of complacency, and, in- 
deed, her attitude toward her Lord is that of chief 
sultana. 

Later instances of reaction are as striking. James 
Fraser of Brae has one very black relapse, during 
which he almost doubts God's existence. Thomas 
Haliburton's revulsion of feeling brings him very 
low. The clouds which hang over the spirits of Fox 
and Bunyan are thick, indeed, and last longer than 
do the bursts of sunshine. Joseph Hoag observes 
that he was all his life subject to frightful reaction 
and depression. James Lackington's and Lomenie de 
Brienne's relapses followed regularly upon their con- 



320 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

versions. Thomas Boston has as many relapses as 
moments of peace. M. A. Schimmelpenninck, in a 
violent relapse, shrank from all religions thoughts 
and ideas, both with distaste and from exhaustion. 
Job Scott underwent many "discouragements and 
heavy exercises." E. Stirredge remained a deeply 
sorrowful woman, who never seems to have felt any 
happiness from her conversion. J. Blanco White is 
another person whose peace is but brief, whose de- 
jection is constant; so also is Isaac Williams, the 
friend of Newman and Keble. John Haime and John 
Nelson backslide into frightful, maniacal periods of 
gloom and horror. In fact, nearly all of the early 
Methodist cases have reactions of peculiar violence. 
Therese of the Holy Child, although even her di- 
rector termed her sinless, experienced dreadful aridity 
and gloom after taking the veil, until her early death. 
Charles Marshall experienced violent reactions and 
struggles with the enemy. Peter Favre notes heavy 
relapses and was much afflicted, until "divers pious 
motions " revived him. John Trevor, like Uriel 
d'Acosta, constantly turns hither and yon, eager to 
obtain the peace which his conversion did not bring. 
Jerry McAuley experienced several conversions with 
relapses between. David Nitschman's recurrences of 
doubt were cured only by his delivering himself 
"formally," as he put it, into God's hands, whence 
he knew peace. Much the same experience befell 
Samuel Neale. Dame Gertrude More's relapse was 
far harder for her to bear than her pre-converted 
ignorance had been, and Hildegarde of Bingen writes 
poignantly of the shadows in her saintly life. Uber- 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 321 

tino da Casale (who identified himself so closely 
with the Holy Family, that he writes he dined with 
them every Wednesday, and spent the night!) yet 
backslides dreadfully during a visit to Paris, and 
is only recalled to Grace by the influence of Angela 
da Foligno. Joseph Salmon, the Ranter, thinks that 
the Lord purposely sent Satan to assault and test him 
after his conversion-vision of heaven. Hudson-Tay- 
lor experienced painful deadness of soul, after 
obtaining his first assurance of salvation. Black 
reactions troubled Gardiner Spring; while George 
Brysson was often worried by the enemy. A greater 
man than all, Jerome, describes his desert sufferings 
as a series of perpetual relapses into sin, and re- 
conquerings of grace. To John Croker (Friend) re- 
action came like "a cloud of thick darkness"; and 
Joseph Pike was "plunged in inexpressible sorrow 
by the Lord's withdrawal' ' after his first conversion. 
Joseph Smith's reaction took the form of drunken- 
ness and other vices ; which did not prevent his having 
a second dazzling white vision of a personage, "whose 
visage," he writes, "was truly like lightning"; and 
from whom he received the revelation of the Sacred 
Books, the breast-plate, etc. His vices of sensuality, 
his coarseness, and his egotism, follow him to the end 
of his life ; yet never shook the faith of his followers. 
Another form in the development of this emotion 
after conversion is shown by that group who became 
"covenanters with God." Their reaction-periods are 
dissolved by this practice, by which the needed sug- 
gestion may be repeated as often as necessary. 
Thomas Boston makes his first "solemn covenant" un- 



322 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

der a tree in the orchard, but on his ordination he 
draws up a regular instrument in which he terms 
himself "an heir of hell and wrath," to which he 
signs his name. Similarly, Thomas Haliburton makes 
a covenant at eighteen, which tranquillizes him for the 
time; he repeats it after a period of scientific doubt 
and wretchedness; but the peace which it procures 
him is not final. Luther Rice underwent a falling- 
back so intense that he felt as if he were descending 
into hell. This frightened him with the fear of 
losing his mind, so he signed his name to a blank 
sheet of paper, that God might fill it up with his 
destiny. The submission of this act brought happi- 
ness and peace. An attack of smallpox caused Samuel 
Neale to enter into a covenant of this kind, and, that 
he broke it, caused him great agony of mind a few 
years later. A chance sermon impressed Joanna 
Turner with the idea that Christ had died for her 
and was her Saviour; so she made a covenant with 
him, and signed it. Though this idea quieted her, 
it was only for a time. William Wilson during his 
conflict makes several different covenants with God. 
A covenant with God, which is frequently renewed, 
is the means taken by Dr. Theophilus Lobb, to preserve 
himself from the assaults of some "horrid and 
violent temptations," the nature of which, however, 
he does not tell us. Joseph Lathrop, on ordination, 
solemnly covenants with and dedicates himself to 
God. Sometimes these instruments are in the nature 
of regular contracts, in which Christ is the party of 
the second part. We find this in the case of George 
Bewly, who, after an illness during which the tempter 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 323 

fearfully attacked him, "covenanted with God for a 
return of health/ ' and was tranquillized by this idea. 
This last name is that of a Friend — the only one in 
this group, for the more subjective character of the 
Quaker religious tenets made these objective methods 
distasteful to them on the whole. They frequently 
dedicate their lives and thoughts to Heaven, but they 
do not usually sign covenants any more than they 
would take oaths. It is scarcely fair to include 
among these examples of ' ' covenanters with God ' ' that 
of John B. Gough, whose act of signing the total 
abstinence pledge caused him to break off the habit 
of drink, but his is an interesting case. The effect of 
a contract on these minds is steady and helpful. In 
Gough 's case, it aided him to break the evil habit; 
and, despite relapses, had the beneficial result of show- 
ing him that it could be broken; in the other cases it 
seems to clarify their relations with the Deity and to 
make their new life more definite. Neither the cove- 
nant nor its formal delivery has ever prevented the 
reaction. 

In the light of these after conditions, undoubtedly 
the significance of conversion becomes minimized. 
Its exterior effect cannot be denied: — a man turns 
Christian and becomes Bishop of Hippo ; 96 or be- 
comes a Friend 07 and preaches Quakerism; or from 
a quiet Church of England vicar, 98 sets forth as a 
travelling evangelist. But the progress of the emo- 
tion in his soul is not greatly different in respect 
of ebb and flow, of action and reaction. Growing 
older, the subject's feeling upon all matters must be- 
come less keen; his life will run in a more regular 



824* RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

groove. Yet neither the elderly nor the secure, nor the 
successful person, can always look forward to tranquil- 
lity of religious feeling, without oscillation. There 
are cases in which Satan appears to triumph at the 
very deathbed of the converted. 'J. H. Linsley un- 
derwent thick spiritual darkness at his life's end. 
The Devil sorely tempted John Prickard at the last. 
Upon J. J. Olier falls such a period of gloom and 
misery, as also on the saintly nuns Marie de l'lncar- 
nation and Baptiste Varani. During her last illness 
Catherine of Siena is seized by the Devil ; and writes : 
"I circled around the chapel like a person in spasms." 
Margaret Lucas and C. Marshall, both Friends, are 
deeply wretched and anxious just before death. 

On the other hand, M. M. Alacoque never seems to 
have felt a reaction. Swedenborg grew wonderfully 
calm after several frenzied conversion-crises. The 
change in John Newton was absolute; he felt no 
temptations thereafter. M. de Marsay grew serene; 
the hysterical Pere Surin recovered his balance and 
died in peace. G. Miiller is so very sure of grace 
that he hardly left off sinning himself ere he started 
to teach others the true way. Thomas Lee, Sampson 
Staniforth, and Thomas Olivers remain quiet and 
happy. So does Alexander Mather, once he leaves 
off baking on a Sunday. A permanent peace comes 
to George Story; no doubtful seasons trouble Thomas 
Rutherford; and Thomas Tennant remains tranquil. 
Gentle Charles Wesley lived in peace and fervor and 
died without excitement or anxiety. 

The constitution of the nebula — to return for an 



THE DATA ANALYZED: III 225 

instant to our earlier metaphor — remains the princi- 
pal factor in the termination of the religious process. 
Its elements may have been so much disturbed that 
they never wholly coalesce again. Or they may find, 
by rearrangement and readjustment, new and perma- 
nent stability. The rise and development of emo- 
tional religious experience as a process, is surely in- 
dicated in either outcome. 

Somewhat has our investigation been hampered by 
the purpose underlying most of these documents. 
Since they are intended to depict only one stage in 
the life of the writer, they are apt to come to an end 
after conversion, changing merely into journals of 
work. The Quaker records practically all terminate 
at the point when the writers decide to become 
preachers of that faith. Wesley asked of the Meth- 
odists that they conduct their narratives to the mo- 
ment of their joining the Society. Only from those 
rare and scattered cases, where the autobiographical 
intention causes the writer to trace for us the whole 
progress of his experience, are we able to obtain 
glimpses of its final manifestations. 

To many persons the need for telling all these 
things, ceases the very moment they can point to au- 
thority accepted, a standard unfurled. Converts 
like Paul, like Newman; or in lesser instances, like 
Thomas W. Allies, Alphonse de Ratisbonne, Paul 
Lowengard, have no interior history once they have 
parti pris. They are content to become part of a sys- 
tem and to be absorbed, like single drops, into an 
ocean of similar histories. Therefore they tell less of 
their gloom and reaction, their doubt and despair, 



326 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

since these appear to them no longer so important. 
Their narratives cease on that moment when they see, 
as it were, the New Jerusalem secure within their 
grasp; and we are not always able to learn whether 
that glory remains attainable till the end, or whether, 
like the mirage, it vanishes, leaving them once more 
alone in the desert of despair. 



VIII 

MYSTICISM AND ITS INTERPRETATION 



I. Introductory. 
II. Theories and theorists. 

III. Mysticism, genius, and egotism, 

IV. "Divine union." 
V. Phenomena. 

VI. Documents and data. 
VII. Revelations. 
VIII. Analysis of the data. 
IX. Problems of interpretation. 
X. Job and Paul. 
XI. Medical-materialist reasoning. 
XII. Mysticism as a process. 



VIII 

MYSTICISM AND ITS INTERPRETATION 

But what of those who believe that they have passed 
the gates, who, for one ineffable moment, — if for 
one only — have become inmates of that heavenly city ? 
The situation in which they find themselves is one 
of the most complex in human experience, and 
presents one of the oldest and the least understood of 
all human problems. Mysticism as a subject is full 
of difficulties, and difficulties relate to its every part, 
— to the documents, to the data, and to the theories 
which obtain in regard to both of these. Around the 
figures of those men and women, who, in Dante's 
phrase, ' ' approached the end of all desires, ' ' x there 
has grown up a confusing and obscuring cloud of 
conjecture, which to the Middle Ages took the place 
of poetry. ''Every one of these saints," writes Mil- 
man, "had his life of wonder . . . the legend of his 
virtues ... to his votaries a sort of secondary gospel 
wrought into belief by the constant iteration of names 
and events." 2 

Such legendary narrative often usurped the place 
of folk- or fairy-tale ; it fed the fancy of a world which 
had lost the dryad and the dragon, from which the 
centaur and the winged horse had fled. Miracle and 

329 



330 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

marvel, the essential food of human imagination, thus 
took on a new form and became associated with the 
rapid growth of individualism. It is this which the 
colder mind of to-day, seeking for explanations, must 
not forget— that here in the lives and legends of the 
earlier mystics fancy and religion interplay, as in 
the imagination of a child, and that of such, in sober- 
est truth, is the kingdom of heaven. 

So long as mankind accepted the saint without 
question, — or at least set him aside in a separate 
mental compartment, water-tight from any scientific 
criticism or investigation, — then his religion, "self- 
wrought-out, self-disciplined, self-matured, with noth- 
ing necessarily intermediate between the grace of 
God and the soul of man," 8 seemed both natural and 
adequate. It was as much and as fitting a part of his 
legendary equipment as the fairy's wings, or the 
magician's wand. Only when he came to be consid- 
ered in the light of a real man, when this delicate and 
decorative figure, glowing as with all the lovely hues 
of Italian painting, was lifted down from his carved 
and gilded triptych to be set beside other men, did 
the ideas he stood for seem also to be part of 
legend. Examined nearly, they had the thinness of 
legend, and the color of legend, and the vagueness 
of legend. With infinite sadness and care, it has been 
the task of science to unwrap these glittering, cloudy 
tissues of poetry and myth, to lay bare the hearts 
and bodies of men and women like ourselves. Where 
the mystic stood in ecstasy, crying out that he saw 
heights and depths vouchsafed to no other eyes, sci- 
ence is now at hand to chill him with a generalization. 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 331 

It is forced to remind him of the truth "that every 
emotion attracts those ideas and images which nour- 
ish it, and repels those which do not"; 4 and that all 
emotion tends rather to obscurity than to clearness of 
mental vision. While at the same time, it has turned 
to ask of this human being, called mystic, certain 
definite, vital, and far-reaching questions. 

Science enquires, for instance, What manner of man 
is this, who claims to stand at the gates of the un- 
known? What warrant does he give for the cer- 
tainty of his dream? For this sureness, this cer- 
tainty, is the mystic's predominant characteristic; 
however timid before, once his feet are on the mystical 
way, his confidence in himself becomes absolute. The 
manifestations of grace in his ease may take forms 
wholly new, but that it is grace, he is entirely sure. 
He knows that for him, individually, the secret places 
have been opened; to him, individually, the hidden 
truths have been revealed. 

"O world invisible," lie sings, "we view thee, 
O world intangible, we touch thee, 
O world unknowable, we know thee, 
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!"s 

It is chiefly this certitude of the mystic that 
has caused the attention of science to be directed 
upon him. Science is necessarily doubtful of all cer- 
tainty and suspicious of the certain. But the mystic *s 
conviction, his fixity of gaze, his unwavering accept- 
ance of his own position toward the unknown, has 
served to overawe the world for centuries, and in 
itself has caused the whole subject to be placed be- 
yond the sphere of criticism. Is it still so placed? 



332 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

What, in fact, is our attitude toward the saint to- 
day? A survey of his position is proper at the outset 
of this enquiry. 

The mystic is most often the religious confessant, 
and it is moreover upon the religious confession that 
our knowledge of mysticism as a state practically 
rests. A survey of the whole field of records would 
seem, therefore, to be prerequisite to any compre- 
hension of the subject. Yet up to the present time 
such a survey has not been attempted ; and the means 
of studying mysticism, from whatever standpoint, has 
been from quintessential types alone. It does not 
need the student familiar with modern methods of 
comparative study to see the difficulties to which the 
older plan gives rise. Chief among them is the neces- 
sarily theoretical and a priori attitude, taken by a 
writer whenever he cannot work from the facts. 

Books written according to this method are by no 
means old books, for all important work on the sub- 
ject is recent. Much of it, indeed, is so recent, that it 
escapes the austere limitations laid upon such in- 
vestigation by the scientific tendencies of the nine- 
teenth century, and partakes of the reactionary, emo- 
tional influences of the twentieth. These influences 
are to be observed permeating a work so well known as 
Professor James's widely read "Varieties of Religious 
Experience," as well as the books following it. 6 Prac- 
tically all of these studies have their foundation 
in Gorres's "La Mystique Divine, Naturelle et Dia- 
bolique ' ' ; which, though sprung from a devout mind, 
yet shows by its care and method the influences of 
the earlier scientific tendency. 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 333 

A glance at some of the theories contained in these 
works is essential to our purpose (which, the reader 
has not forgotten, is a study of the facts ) , because the 
ideas they propagate are widely disseminated, and are 
frequently accepted and quoted without any reference 
to these same inconvenient facts, or to the assertions 
of the mystics themselves. The volumes to which we 
allude do not by any means confine themselves to per- 
sonal statements of the mystics, nor to their personal 
phenomena; and it must be clearly understood that 
into their writers' more general and abstract theories, 
this work cannot follow them. The relation of mys- 
ticism to self -study, with the personal revelations of 
the mystic, are our sole concern at present; our 
appeal must needs be in, through, and by the facts 
themselves. Practically all works on theoretical mys- 
ticism display a tendency on the part of their authors 
to turn in thought from the simple to the complex, 
from the concrete to the abstract, from the physical 
to the metaphysical. Such manner they appear to 
take for granted; to wrench, as it were, the natural 
point of view violently over to the side of the philo- 
sophical abstraction, and to expect their reader to do 
the same. It is extraordinary, that no one seems 
able to handle this topic, and yet remain intelligible. 
The approach of this angel is enough to trouble the 
waters of many ' ' a well of English undefiled. ' ' When 
it even affects Emerson, one will surely feel less anger 
than pity for the verbal contortions of the Baron von 
Hugel. Even so graceful a writer as Mr. Edmund 
Gardner 7 defines mysticism as ' * the love-illumined 
quest of the soul to unite herself ( ! ) with the supra- 



334 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

sensible — with the absolute — with that which is"! — 
speaks of "seeing Eternity,' ' and uses, as final, the 
citation, "the flight of the alone to the Alone"! 8 

Now, it is never easy to force one's self into an 
abstract view of matters which, after all, are mostly 
concrete. Nor is the difficulty eased in regard to such 
specimens of logic as Miss Underbill's reference to 
the fasting of Catherine of Genoa 9 (of which more 
anon) ; or that of von Hiigel, who, while he writes in 
English, yet never ceases to think in German. The 
mists close thick about the student, helplessly befogged 
in a land, where, after all, he should be able to take 
hold of particular statements, and acts, and events. 
For there is no necessary obscurity in the study of a 
person's withdrawal "from the outward to the inner 
world, from God in the works of nature to God in 
his workings on the soul of man. " 10 It is not a 
question of the matter of men's speculation and the 
method of men's thought, but simply of what certain 
persons have felt and stated, have said and done. 
There is evidence to summon, to sift, and to classify ; 
all we have known or can know about the subject lies 
in this evidence. The validity of such evidence is, 
therefore, the starting-point of the whole investiga- 
tion; not the transcendental theories which have 
been used to shroud and becloud the subject. What 
care we whether sanctification precedes unification or 
follows it, until we know on what actual occurrences 
these terms are founded? How can we define the 
"awareness of a relation with God" 1X unless we know 
the mystic's reason for believing that he is conscious 
of such a relation? How do we know that such and. 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 335 

such a saint experienced such and such feelings, until 
we have examined his own statements? Mysticism 
may be cleared of vagueness if one wishes, but only by 
reducing it to the simplest comprehensible terms. 

What we do know is that, for centuries past, per- 
sons have lived, called mystics by reason of their 
supposed hold on hidden things; who have laid 
claim to special truths vouchsafed to them, indi- 
vidually, and in a particular manner. The exist- 
ence of these persons and of this assumption on their 
part is, strictly speaking, all that we really know, 
outside of what they themselves have communicated 
in writing or to their disciples. The manner in which 
truth is communicated to these subjects has been de- 
scribed, both by themselves and others, as entirely 
outside, and independent of, the normal, natural 
manner of its communication — and it is, therefore, 
properly designated as abnormal or as supernatural, 
and has been so called by the world at large. 

The student to-day is surely entitled to ask further 
questions, before he can accept these assumptions. 
What sort of persons are these % What sort of truth 
has been so revealed to them? What is the evidence 
that they have been so distinguished, and in what 
ways do they differ from himself? 

Any creed claiming a mystical foundation must 
base itself on the assumption that the founder thereof, 
be he Paul or Mahomet, Fox or Swedenborg, received 
in some manner a truth which the rest of the world 
had not, and which, therefore, he was to preach and 
reveal. This idea forms a comparatively simple ap- 
proach to any enquiry into the personal elements of 



836 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

mysticism. "When a man refers to inward feelings 
and experiences/' says Coleridge, 12 "of which man- 
kind at large are not conscious, as evidences of the 
truth of any opinion, such a man I call a mystic : and 
the grounding of any theory or belief on accidents 
and anomalies of individual sensations or fancies . . . 
I name mysticism." 

The usual way of studying these "anomalies of 
individual sensations " is, first, to assume that they 
exist; second, to assume that this existence is "a sort 
of undifferentiated consciousness, " 13 only to be de- 
scribed in abstract terms; and third, to assume that 
such sensations necessarily involve "the perception 
of higher reality." 14 To this chain of assumptions 
the modern investigator generally adds some refer- 
ences to the better-known psychological phenomena, as 
emphasized in the cases of the greater contemplatives ; 
cites Teresa, Loyola, Mme. Guyon, and Suso ; and then 
readily launches upon a thoroughly abstract discus- 
sion of his thoroughly a priori theories. Most of these 
discussions appear to require but the thinnest pos- 
sible substratum of fact. Von Hiigel's two stout vol- 
umes on the subject of Catherine of Genoa, have for 
their entire foundation but the "Vita" and a few 
letters of her own and her disciples. 

The present section is but a sincere attempt to 
examine into the foundation of these elaborate theo- 
ries; with reference to what the mystics have really 
said, and what they have really done. It is evident 
at the outset that one must approach them from a 
point of view removed as far as possible from their 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 337 

own. To this end the classification of the data they 
give concerning themselves, must be accompanied by 
a rigid elimination of their own terms in describing 
it. The terminology of mysticism has been largely 
responsible for the prevailing confusion about the sub- 
ject; for the average reader may watch the saint pass 
from the via purgativa and the via passiva, to the via 
illiiminativa and be lost in the ecstasies of the via uni- 
tiva, 15 yet never be a whit the wiser. Translate the 
mystic's premises into simpler terms, and it appears 
to be that he feels he has attained truth through 
means other than those provided by the senses. More- 
over, the fact that truth is to be so attained, consti- 
tutes to him a sufficient proof of the existence of a 
transcendental state, and thus of the transcendental 
world. "And if any have been so happy," remarks 
Sir Thomas Browne, not without irony, "as truly to 
understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, 
liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, 
gustation of God and ingression into the divine 
shadow, — they have already had a handsome anticipa- 
tion of heaven!" 16 

One does not wish to fall into the attitude which 
Professor James deprecates in the medical mate- 
rialist, "that of discrediting states of mind, for 
which we have an antipathy. ' ' 17 Our endeavor 
should rather be to understand them. Yet surely 
it is always permissible to question any assumption, 
nor can it be wrong to subject a claim so vital 
to the same rigid scrutiny which one would feel in 
honor bound obliged to accord any other claim equally 



338 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

wide in its effect on human life and ideals. Science 
has an inalienable right of examination into this as 
into all other evidence of truth. 

The first principle of such an examination must be 
to reach back to the words and statements of the mys- 
tics themselves ; since the instant these reach the hand 
of the theorist, they tend to undergo the most unfore- 
seen and extraordinary transformations. As an ex- 
ample, let us turn to the question of the fasting 
of Catherine of Genoa, of which mention has al- 
ready been made. Says Miss Underhill: 18 "It is 
an historical fact, unusually well-attested by con- 
temporary evidence and quite outside the sphere of 
hagiographic romance that . . . Catherine of Genoa 
lived . . . for constantly repeated periods of many 
weeks without any other food than the consecrated 
Host received at Holy Communion ,, ; during which 
periods she conducted the management of her hospital 
with every evidence of health. This would seem to 
be a sober yet striking statement of fact. The hyper- 
critical might perhaps question the value of any con- 
temporary evidence upon such a subject; but most 
of us would accept it without demur. The writer 
founds it upon Von Hiigel's elaborate analysis of 
Catherine's "Vita"; with which it may be profit- 
ably compared. And what does such comparison re- 
veal? In the first place, that the very "Vita" which 
is used as a warrant for this statement is considered, 
even by its editor, as lying well within rather than 
without "the sphere of hagiographic romance." 19 
Secondly, that Catherine's fasts were not absolute, 
since the saint drank often of salt-water and of wine ; 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 339 

while she also partook * ' a small amount of solid food 
which at times she was able to retain" ! 20 

The reader has scarcely recovered from the shock 
of this decided modification of Miss UnderhilTs sen- 
tence about "constantly repeated periods of many 
weeks without any other food" than the Host, when 
he reads further in the "Vita" that Catherine's health, 
even through this limited fasting, was so much affected, 
that in the year 1496 she abandoned the practice 
altogether, and even took food on the regular fast- 
days! Is it any wonder that a rooted and grounded 
distrust is the first sentiment aroused by any study of 
works on mysticism ? Is it any wonder that one finds 
it necessary to refer only to the facts furnished by 
the mystic himself? Cases might be multiplied in- 
definitely in which the whole superstructure of theory 
has been raised on a similar foundation of misunder- 
standing. The reader will not have forgotten the 
literature of Paul's conversion. 21 Wherever the sub- 
ject opens into the unknown, there will be found pres- 
ent an apparent tendency in the human mind to dis- 
tort, to qualify, or to misinterpret the phenomena it 
observes. 

Therefore, however limited, however scanty, the 
data yielded by authentic first-hand records, give at 
least some solid ground beneath the worker's feet. 
True, the field is greatly narrowed whenever such lim- 
itations are imposed upon it. Very many great mys- 
tics have left no such material: the world has relied 
wholly upon others for its knowledge of them. 22 Who 
can pass to-day upon the correctness of such knowl- 
edge ? To this essential nature of the facts, what they 



340 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

are and what they indicate, we shall, of course, return. 
Our concern at the moment lies with certain prevalent 
theories of mysticism, which, it is evident, occupy 
themselves far less with fact than might be wished. 
These theories try to substantiate the mystic's claim 
to the extra-sensual reception of truth; and offer 
various metaphysical or philosophical explanations. 

In contradistinction to this view, will be found the 
group of rationalists, mostly French, who place the 
whole matter sweepingly in the realm of pathology. 23 
Their claims require a separate discussion; but the 
influence of William James, who had as harsh an esti- 
mate of their ideas as Gorres himself, writing before 
1836, could have had, has caused them to give way, 
temporarily at least, before the metaphysical battal- 
ions. Miss Underbill's book 24 stands well in the fore- 
front of these latter, and gives, perhaps, as clear an 
exposition of their point of view as is possible in the 
nature of things, and in the style of the writer. 

' ' That which our religious and ethical teachers were 
wont to call mere emotion," says this writer, "is now 
acknowledged to be of the primal stuff of conscious- 
ness. . . . Thought is but its servant. ' ' She develops 
Pascal's observation: ". . . 'The heart has its rea- 
sons which the mind knows not of .' ... At the touch 
of passion doors fly open which logic has battered on 
in vain." Although this author thus places re- 
ligion beyond the realm of the intellect, yet she para- 
doxically desires to formulate an intellectual system 
of mysticism. At the same time she holds the terms 
and symbols of psychology quite insufficient to handle 
the mystic life. Theories of the subconscious are 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 341 

to her mind but shadowy and tentative in contrast 
with the certainty of the saints. "They, too, were 
aware that in normal men the spiritual sense lies 
below the threshold of consciousness. ' ' 25 An insist- 
ence that the mystical way is the way of reality and 
truth ; that the mystic, like genius, is beyond the law ; 
that mysticism is the more direct method of reach- 
ing toward "the ideally normal state of man's develop- 
ment ' ' — forms the main thesis of her argument. ' l The 
mystic belongs," she further remarks, "to the un- 
solved problems of humanity"; 26 and for our full and 
proper comprehension "the mystics need to be removed 
both from the sphere of marvel and that of disease." 

In treating the mystic as a genius, Miss Underhill, 
of course, is not alone. In his introduction, Dr. 
Jones 27 repeats the same idea when he prefers ' ' to 
dwell on the tremendous service of the mystics. ' ' He 
does not define these services, nor specify the attained 
truths, beyond likening their effect to that of great 
poetry or great music ; but to his mind apparently they 
form a "vital and dynamic religion." 

Putting aside for the moment any considera- 
tion of the psychical phenomena of this state and 
their effect on the mystic, in order to regard the ques- 
tion of results, the honest and untranscendental mind 
is at once struck by their amazing paucity. If we 
were asked to define genius as broadly as may be, most 
of us undoubtedly would insist on the idea of creative- 
ness: it is the creative power of a genius which is pre- 
requisite to our placing him in that class. What- 
ever be our theory of genius, we have no doubt what- 
ever that its result is creation. In the light of re- 



842 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

suit, in the light of creation, how scanty is the achieve- 
ment of the mystic, compared with the poet, the artist, 
or the musician! If he does receive truth, as we do 
not, how little has he contributed to the world 's stock 
of ideas! Moreover, if we regard him more nearly, 
will it not be often found that the mystic has accom- 
plished his task rather in spite of, than by reason of, 
his mysticism? The work of Paul, for instance, was 
done well after his mystical period was ended; he 
speaks of it as past. 28 It is his power of organization, 
his eloquence, his dogmatic intellect, which dissemi- 
nated Christianity, not the fact that he beheld a vision. 
All Loyola's great constructive task was started well 
after his mystical experiences were over. So was it 
likewise with Luther, who believed he had had these 
experiences, if to us he seems hardly the mystic at all. 
When George Fox began to preach, his visions and 
voices grew far less marked than when he wan- 
dered on the lonely moors. While religious experi- 
ence, while mysticism, may be purely emotional, yet 
the creative faculty must needs involve the intel- 
lect, which will immediately act as a solvent to any 
state of pure emotionalism. The great mystic may 
not, of course, be aware of the fact, but the process 
which in his soul was started at the touch of intense 
emotion, tends to decline the moment he summons his 
intellect to act on the suggestion. It has been seen 
how Catherine of Genoa found that her trances, in- 
duced by fasting, interfered with her labors in the hos- 
pital. Although Delacroix acknowledges in Teresa, 29 
"l'etat de nevrosisme grave," yet he notes that her 
life was by no means wholly absorbed in the condi- 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 343 

tions superinduced by ecstasy. Another writer 
observes of the same case, that she "has a marvellous 
way of keeping separate the various actions of the 
soul and of observing their effects . . . her autobiog- 
raphy is one of the chief authorities upon which re- 
ligious sentiment is based . . . while her self -analysis 
is well on the way to becoming actual psychology. ' ' 30 
And yet the mystical system, evolved as the result of 
all this, has for its aim but "quiescence, emptiness 
of soul, darkened consciousness, and the suspension 
of the natural understanding !" 30 Surely, genius is 
not quiescence but activity; it is not emptiness but 
fulness; the consciousness not darkened but bright- 
ened, the understanding not suspended but vivified 
and heightened. 

The names just mentioned are important names, 
their owners would have been personages in any walk 
of life. When one regards the cluster of the lesser 
mystics, then the facts grow more and more sug- 
gestive, and what they suggest is not genius. Dela- 
croix 31 comments on Mme. Guyon's mysticism having 
caused her "une singuliere impuissance intellec- 
tuelle," and cites her words, "Je deviens toute stu- 
pide." "Grace a Dieu," remarks A. C. Emmerich, 
"je n'ai presque jamais rien lu." One cannot forget 
the automatic stupidity of M. M. Alacoque, who con- 
tinued to stand at the convent gate to keep the pigs 
out of the garden, long after the same animals had 
been made into sausages. 32 Maria d'Agreda blessed 
God that she was considered mentally weak; and 
r Joanna Southcott is humbly proud of her own dulness 
in affairs worldly. Such incidents and attitudes as 



344 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

these do not indicate the presence of genius, with its 
rich creative activity, its rich energy, its rich sym- 
pathy with all forms of life. 33 Of course, it is not 
for one instant denied that many types of genius are 
accompanied by a certain degree of mysticism; it is 
only questioned whether this mysticism is a vital 
factor. In literature, for instance, there is a tendency 
to attribute to mysticism much that is properly due 
only to forces literary and personal. Without the 
literary gift, what influence can the mystic leave be- 
hind him? Who, nowadays, reads Maria d'Agreda? 
Is it not those portions of the work of Augustin, or 
of Teresa, which breathe of human sympathy and 
human ideals, which have survived their mystical out- 
pourings ? 

Literature is not, many will reply, a fair test; 
the writer is essentially self-conscious, and the need 
of expression stands in his path, forcing him to 
crystallize those emotions which are intended to re- 
main delicately floating and evanescent. Perhaps; 
certainly the true mystic regarded literature often in 
the nature of a snare. 34 Great contemplatives have 
died wholly sterile, and their heritage of truth has 
died with them. 

That the truth seems so to die, is contradictory to 
the idea that mysticism is a form of genius; if gen- 
ius be the means of preserving truth to mankind. If 
that truth be closely examined which the mystic claims 
to have received in a special and individual manner, 
it will invariably be found to refer only to the mys- 
tic himself. It is he, no other, who experienced 
ecstasy or unification, or who espouses Christ, or who 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 345 

beholds heaven or hell. The whole mystical scheme 
is profoundly, nay, even necessarily, egotistical, as 
Dean Milman says of "The Imitation of Christ": 35 
"It begins in self . . . terminates in self." As such 
it must be regarded rather as an artificial, abnormal 
condition, than, as Miss Underhill would have it, * ' an 
ideally normal state of man's development." 

So much for the question of results due to mysti- 
cism. Our theorists greatly object, as we have already 
seen, to the pathological view of this state taken by 
the medical-materialist. The great contemplatives, in 
their opinion, "are almost always persons of robust 
intelligence and marked practical and intellectual 
ability." 36 Miss Underhill admits they suffer often 
from bad physical health ; and that this characteristic 
does produce "inexplicable modifications of the physi- 
cal organism"; but she refuses to connect it with hys- 
teria, because "the mono-ideism of the mystic is ra- 
tional, while that of the hysteric patient is invariably 
irrational." 37 

In that debatable land, where science still struggles 
to define for us the limits of mental health and dis- 
ease, the question of rationality and irrationality be- 
comes one of those fluctuating problems which are apt 
to be settled by each person according to his personal 
temperament and training. The sentence just cited 
gives it shape in its most perplexing form. Why is 
one and the same idee fixe to be termed rational in one 
case and irrational in another ? Why is the hysterical 
patient who refuses to take a bath irrational, while 
Juliana of Norwich and Lyduine of Schiedam, in their 
saintly filth, are rational? Can any unbiased mind 



346 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

call rational the "mono-ideism" of A. C. Emmerich, 
of M. M. Alacoque, of Suso, of Baptista Vernazza, 
of Antoinette Bourignon? Even contemporary judg- 
ments spoke of the " ravings' ' of Hildegarde, of 
Joanna Southcott, and of Maria d'Agreda. The phys- 
ical condition is not, as Miss Underhill seems to think, 
mere accident or mere coincidence; our examples col- 
lected under that head will be found to point fixedly 
in one direction. 

Von Hugel, 38 discussing this question, goes even 
further than Professor James's somewhat tentative 
suggestion, and thus warns the reader: " Never forget 
that physical health is not the true end of human life 
. . . the true question here is not whether such a type 
of life as we are considering exacts a serious physical 
tribute or not, but whether the specifically human ef- 
fects and fruits of that life are worth the cost. ' ' No 
doubt this were well to remember in an age which 
tends to make mere health somewhat of a fetich; but 
the very query brings us once more face to face with 
the unanswerable request for results. Where in the 
mystic life do we find "those specifically human ef- 
fects and fruits"? The genius has always his mes- 
sage, be he Christ or Cassar, but what truth has the 
minor mystic learned to teach his kind? 

The truth most often claimed, which most com- 
mentators and historians accept without cavil, or ques- 
tion, or even investigation, relates to what is known 
as unification; — i.e., the union of the soul with the 
Divine. That such an union is possible has been the 
primary assumption of all mystics. On this assump- 
tion has been founded in the past such systems as those 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 347 

of Bonaventura and the Victorines; in the present, 
such compromises as that of Professor William James. 
It is used, moreover, to explain a great many phe- 
nomena; it has never received serious criticism even 
at materialist hands. That Man is in essence Divine ; 
that he can at moments return to and become one 
with Divinity, is an idea deeply rooted in the human 
imagination. 

Were this book to be a history of mysticism (and the 
subject still awaits some rational and sympathetic 
mind), it would be interesting to trace this idea of 
Divine union, from its primitive sources. We see it 
first in those days when half -savage man conceived his 
own deification during his lifetime as quite possible, 
and his immediate deification after his death as the 
only rational theory of immortality. Those were the 
days when God walked with Adam in the cool of the 
evening, and their souls were not so far apart as our 
conceptions make them appear to-day. Christianity 
would seem to have taken the idea chiefly from Plo- 
tinus, who laid definite claim to having achieved such 
union more than once. 39 Elaborated in the system of 
Dionysius the Areopagite, this initial conception of 
the soul's return to, and absorption in, the Divine, 
became connected with those complicated theories of 
the celestial hierarchy, which served to bring heaven 
so near to the Middle Ages. The classical ethnologists 
now regard this conception simply as the attempt of 
minds of a higher development to account for the prev- 
alent beliefs, carried on from their stage of earlier 
savagery. " Spiritual beings swarming through the 
atmosphere we breathe," 40 is the theory by which a 



348 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

mind like that of Dionysius would fain explain the 
shreds and patches of earlier animistic beliefs, still 
clinging alike to the imaginations of the unlettered 
and the lettered. Similar ideas prevail to-day in the 
South Sea Islands, where the native holds the world 
to be crowded with spirits. That characteristic effort 
to formulate, to systematize those mystical ideas which 
men found hanging, as it were, in the air beside them 
during the first Christian centuries, is repeated by 
Dionysius. From the Divine union of Plotinus to the 
conception of an angelic host, was but a step, and a 
step which made it fairly easy to hold that any human 
soul, under certain conditions, might attain to a species 
of deification. Men thus gradually came to believe in 
the flattering notion of their own (if momentary) 
divinity ; and they continued to hold it despite the pro- 
tests of common sense. Martin Luther cried out in his 
vehement way, "that the mystical divinity of Dionys- 
ius is a fable and a lie!" 41 — but he stood well-nigh 
alone in this opinion. The mediaeval world clung 
closely to the idea of an ineffable moment, during 
which the soul cast off all earthly trammels and be- 
came absolutely a part of the essence of God. 

Now, when we try to discover to-day exactly what 
this idea meant to the mystic himself — how it affected 
him — how he knew, to put it bluntly, that he had 
attained to such an union, a clamor of voices arises 
from the past, and no clear utterance save one. With- 
out the voice of Augustin, indeed, it would be almost 
impossible for us to conceive how the mediaeval mind 
was ever able even to try to systematize the indescrib- 
able. Dante, 42 it is true, insisted on the reality of 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 349 

the intellect's "passing beyond human measure"; 
and adds, that if the ' ' Scripture suffice not the invidi- 
ous, let them read Richard of St. Victor, Bernard 
and Augustin, and they will not grudge assent." 
Personally, however, Dante seems to have confused 
the idea of religious ecstasy with that of poetic in- 
spiration, which he naturally felt to be for him the 
true expression of the Divine idea. The mystical at- 
titude is displayed more typically by Richard of St. 
Victor, in whose effort to explain it may be noted 
the germ of many a modern theoretical weakness. 
"When by excess of mind," he writes, 43 "we are 
rapt above or within ourselves into the contempla- 
tion of divine things, not only are we straightway 
oblivious of things external but also of all that passes 
in us. . . . And therefore when we return to ourselves 
from that state of exaltation we cannot by any means 
recall to our memory those things which we have 
erst seen above ourselves. We see, as it were, in a 
veil and in the midst of a cloud. ... In wondrous 
fashion, remembering we do not remember, . . . see- 
ing we do not behold . . . and understanding we do 
not penetrate." 

This is the type of mystical writing whose influ- 
ence in the past over a certain kind of mind, was al- 
most hypnotic. It appears to tell so much; and, of 
course, realizing the date of its composition, it must 
be acknowledged as an admirable attempt at the de- 
scriptive psychology of inner experience. Yet, when 
examined by the quiet eye of common sense, Richard 's 
statement is merely that, during ecstasy, the mind 
neither formulates any thoughts, nor the memory 



250 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

recalls any experiences. The contemplator, really, 
neither perceives aught, nor understands aught, nor 
remembers aught, of his experiences; he knows only 
that he has been "away." Surely this conception is 
more elastic than that of Hugh of St. Victor, who had 
defined it as spiritual marriage, in which "the Bride- 
groom is God and the Bride is the Soul." 44 The 
various systems of "grades and steps" by which the 
mediaeval formalist tried to satisfy his intellect, leads 
the modern student no nearer truth than this sim- 
ple statement of the mystic that his soul had been 
"away." 

Let the reader carry in his mind, for a little, this 
one idea, — that the mediaeval mind believed the soul 
might be away, and might return. It will be found 
to have a significance for him to-day, which it did 
not possess for the Yictorines. Let him add to it, if 
he will, a paragraph from the "Confessions," in 
which Augustin, at the height of his genius, laid the 
foundation for ten centuries of mysticism, — and he 
will possess in his own memory, the key to this en- 
tire kingdom. Charged with poetry, Augustin 's 
words are lucidity itself ; and they convey a deep per- 
ception of an important psychological truth, qualified, 
limited, defined, as truth must be. 

Says the saint : 45 " If to any the tumult of the flesh 
were hushed, hushed the images of earth, and waters 
and air, hushed also the poles of heaven, yea, the very 
soul be hushed to herself, and by not thinking on self, 
surmount self, hushed all dreams and imaginary reve- 
lations, every tongue and every sign, ... if then, . . . 
He alone speak . . . not through any tongue of flesh, 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 351 

nor angel's voice, nor sound of thunder, nor in the 
dark riddle of a similitude, . . . but we might hear 
His very self without these (as we two now strained 
ourselves and in swift thought touched on that Eter- 
nal Wisdom which abide th over all) ; — could this be 
continued on, and other visions of a kind far unlike 
be withdrawn, and this one ravish, and absorb, and 
wrap up its beholder amid these inward joys, so that 
life might be forever like that one moment of under- 
standing which now we sighed after; were not this: 
'Enter into the joy of thy Lord'?" 

After all the frantic jargon of the transcendental- 
ism — what an accent, what words, are these ! The 
accurate self-observation which led Augustin to for- 
mulate such questions is the result of his peculiarly 
introspective genius; but he never forgets that they 
are questions, and that he asks them of himself. The 
mediaeval world forgot that Augustin said "If," and 
"Were not this?"; but, seizing upon the suggestion 
that described so profound a truth of human feeling, 
it omitted the limitations which Augustin had been 
so careful to retain. In another work, 46 he observes, 
with equal caution, that " Certain great and incom- 
parable souls whom we believe to have seen and to 
see these things, have told as much as they judge 
meet to be told." Here are sentences which stand 
close to our modern point of view in their careful 
moderation; and the interpretation, which for cen- 
turies the world of transcendental thought chose to 
make of them, are only another warrant for a return 
to the original statement. 

Upon these paragraphs, supplemented by the half- 



252 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

legendary experiences of the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, 
elaborated and confused by the Areopagite, the en- 
tire structure of mediseval mysticism is founded; 
they are the real gates to the Via Mystica. Upon 
these great "ifs" of Augustin, — if the tumult of the 
flesh were hushed, and if we could hear God 's voice, — - 
and if his word continued on and blotted out all else, 
— and if all life might be like that one "moment of 
understanding," — the imagination of the Middle Ages 
built a new heaven and a new hell. The effect of this 
idea on the simple mind was no deeper than on the 
powerful mind. Systematized by Bonaventura and 
the St. Victors, carried to extravagant excess by Mech- 
tilde or Catherine of Siena, this initial "if" of Au- 
gustin contains the real phenomenon of mysticism. 

It is the world's ready response to this somewhat 
complex suggestion that holds the real miracle. If 
Plotinus felt the characteristic certitude of the mys- 
tical subject, surely we see here that Augustin did 
not ! Yet he is made by most writers to father the 
whole body of mystical phenomena, — visions, voices, 
ecstasies, — with never so much as a hint of an "if." 

The experiences of the mystics, as a body, did not 
come under observation till less than a century ago. 
One would naturally have supposed that the first step 
would be the examination of the evidence at hand. 
But even to-day, and by the writers under pres- 
ent discussion, the primary assumption of the mys- 
tic is not so much as questioned. It is taken for 
granted that the mystical experience is, for instance, 
productive of truth ; yet we have seen that, when un- 
wrapped from its verbal tissues, Richard of St. Vic- 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 853 

tor's statement is only that his soul at moments was 
"away." This is no very striking result, when com- 
pared to the inferences drawn by Victorine commenta- 
tors, but it is exceedingly typical. That quiet eye of 
common sense, before whose gaze many theories must 
needs evaporate, when turned upon the mystic, will see 
a monstrous heap of such theories, piled upon a very 
small substratum of fact. What results will it dis- 
cover in other mystical phenomena ? Our modern the- 
orists accept the visions and voices, but find them hard 
to explain. Miss Underhill, calling the subject "the 
eternal battleground, ' ' 47 thinks both sides extreme, 
and favors a symbolistic interpretation. 48 At times, 
according to her view, the visionary experiences may 
become pathological, or neurotic, and when this oc- 
curs, then they express "merely exhaustion or tem- 
porary loss of balance." To the latter condition be- 
long the personal self-glorification of Angela da Fo- 
ligno; 49 while Loyola's vision of the plectrum was of 
the high symbolic type. 50 

It has ever been characteristic of a certain type of 
theorist, that he starts by ignoring the proposition that 
things which are equal to the same thing are equal to 
each other. How is the adherent of pure symbolism 
to differentiate between those manifestations by visions 
and voices which came from the mystic's higher 
power; and those which proceed from his loss of bal- 
ance? Naturally, they become classified according to 
the critic 's own beliefs and imagination, just as Luther 
classified his vision as from the Devil. One may de- 
cide, for instance, that the "spiritual marriage" of 
Gertrude of Eisleben was symbolistic; another, that 



354 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

that of Angela da Foligno proceeded from hysteria. 
As the mystical subject herself is never in the least 
doubtful as to the source of her experiences, and as 
these experiences, when compared, will be found to re- 
semble one another to the smallest particular, no desire 
for compromise can make it a reasonable proceeding to 
exalt the one and to condemn the other, while we have 
the identical evidence — or lack of evidence — in regard 
to both. 

"In persons of mystical genius,' ' explains Miss Un- 
derbill, "the qualities which the stress of normal life 
tends to keep below the threshold of consciousness, are 
of enormous strength. . . . They develop unchecked 
until a point is reached ... at which they break their 
bonds and emerge into the conscious field ; either tem- 
porarily dominating the subject, as in ecstasy, or per- 
manently transmuting the old self, as in the unitive 
life/' 51 

Our comment upon this passage is but to return once 
again to that collection of facts relating to relapse and 
reaction, which occupy so many pages of this volume. 
These will be seen to have an especial bearing on the 
progressive states of emotion of the mystic; and to 
throw a new light on that permanent transmutation 
of the self, of which Miss Underhill speaks so con- 
fidently. Is there any actual record of even one such 
permanent transmutation? Are there not, even 
among those souls whose essential spirituality is ex- 
alted to the highest point, — whose general plane seems 
to differ from our own, — are there not always periods 
of relapse, of reaction, of aridity, of withdrawal from 
God 1 So keenly are these states of reaction felt by the 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 255 

greater mystics, that it is of them John of the Cross 
would speak when he uses the phrase "the Dark Night 
of the Soul. ' ' If the mystical way be, indeed, a way of 
ascent, then the language used by the pilgrims them- 
selves to describe the oscillation of their state is of ex- 
traordinary vividness, and by no means confident or 
assured. This oscillation is described as an unspeak- 
able agony of pain mental and physical; Canon 
Vaughan 52 gives a series of cited phrases to denote it, 
which are in themselves very striking. Teresa 's is the 
most moderate; she calls it simply the "gran pena" 
which accompanied and preceded the mystical state. 
"This pain is the 'pressura interna' of Tauler; the 
'horribile et indicibile tormentum' of Catherine of 
Genoa; the 'purgatory' of Thomas a Jesu; the 'lan- 
guor infernalis' of Harphius; the 'terribile martyr- 
ium ' of Maria Vela the Cistercian ; the ' divisio naturse 
ac spiritus' of Barbanson; the 'privation worse than 
hell' of Angela da Foligno." Some of these epithets, 
notably that of Barbanson, are most suggestive, and 
we shall have cause to remember them later. But the 
whole question of the soul 's ascent to higher levels as- 
sumes a very different aspect when these periods of 
conflict and relapse are examined. That moment of 
unity with God, which is the highest pinnacle of this 
condition, is very transient compared with the oscil- 
lations which may reach up to it, and whether one 
can reasonably — I do not say logically — term such a 
moment a permanent transmutation, is a matter of 
serious doubt. Delacroix 53 points out the need of 
differentiating between the passive mystic and him 
who conquers souls; and gives an interesting defini- 



356 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

tion of mysticism as "un certain etat d 'exaltation, 
qui abroge le sentiment du Moi ordinaire. ' ' 54 Al- 
though he does not ignore the presence of the " peine 
extatique ' ' 55 of Teresa, or the "mort mystique" of 
Mme. Guyon, yet he does not lend them any especial 
emphasis by criticism. That ecstatic moment, which is 
the mystic's highest aim and achievement, plays so 
small a part, in time, in his whole progress, that there 
is no evidence whatever it can possibly "abroge le 
sentiment du Moi ordinaire." On the contrary, the 
words and actions of the mystic during every age show 
that the necessary occupation with his own feelings 
and ideas has served to increase and to enlarge the 
Ego, to make the "Moi" wholly disproportionate. 
In fact, the extent and profundity of the mystical 
egotism is another argument for refusing to class 
it with genius. Genius is frequently egotistic, but 
egotism is not its end and aim, as it is always the end 
and aim of mysticism. The mystic may scourge and 
trample on the physical self, but it is always for the 
purpose of exalting and indulging what he holds to be 
his higher self. 

The self-importance aroused by this attitude is limit- 
less. Ubertino da Casale regarded himself as on the 
most intimate terms with the Holy Family, and often 
as the "brother" of Christ. Angela da Foligno says 
that Christ told her he loved her better than any 
woman in the vale of Spoleto. The words of this 
passage are fatuous almost beyond belief : ' ' Then He 
began to say to me the words that follow, to provoke 
me to love Him; my sweet daughter! my 
daughter, my temple! my daughter, my delight! 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 357 

Love me, because thou art much loved by Me. And 
often did He say to me: my daughter, My sweet 
Spouse! And He added in an underbreath, I love 
thee more than any other woman in the valley of 
Spoleto." 56 To amuse and to delight Gertrude of 
Eisleben, He sang duets with her "in a tender and 
harmonious voice." The same saint writes of their 
"incredible intimacy"; and here, as in later passages 
of Angela da Foligno, the reader is revolted by their 
sensuality. When Sister Therese of the Holy Child, 57 
learned the name which had been given her in re- 
ligion, she took it for "a delicate attention of the 
adorable Child!" Jesus told Osanna Andreasi that 
he would himself teach her to be a little saint. In the 
diary of Marie de l'lncarnation there is such an en- 
try as "entretien familier avec J. — C"; and during 
such interviews she makes use of a sort of pious baby- 
talk, like a saintly Tillie Slowboy. The famous Beata 
di Piedrahita, Dr. Lea tells us, upheld her claim to 
Divine powers by declaring that Christ was often with 
her, and even that she herself was Christ. 58 Mary 
of the Divine Heart (who died in 1899) heard the 
voice saying : "You will be the Spouse of my heart. ' ' 

It is needless once more to single out those persons 
who were regarded, as they thought, by the Devil in 
the light of almost equal foes ; nor to repeat that the 
attitude toward God of M. M. Alacoque, Baptiste 
Varani, A. C. Emmerich, was that of a favorite 
sultana. Moreover, that ineffable instant of union 
with the Divine, is usually expressed in terms exalt- 
ing the mystic rather than his Deity. "I ate and 
drank of God," observes Baptista Vernazza; and 



358 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

again, "God wished to devour Me entirely!' ' He as- 
sured Angela da Foligno: "All the Saints of Paradise 
have for thee a special love, and I shall join thee to 
their company. ' ' 59 " There was nothing between God 
and my soul," remarks the complacent Antoinette 
Bourignon; and just in this same manner boasts 
Joseph Smith, the Mormon; "God is my right-hand 
man!" 60 

All this may be, and has been, variously regarded ; it 
may be considered as mediaeval naivete; or as sexual 
excitement ; or as megalomania from paresis ; but what- 
ever the explanation, such attitudes cannot be held to 
imply any abrogation of the Ego. Such an idea was 
not present in the minds of any of the great ascetics ; 
for their self-importance was carried much further 
than simply into accidental practice ; it was a dogma ; 
so preached and taught. We, who read these instances 
with mingled feelings of incredulity and disgust, must 
not forget that occupation with one's own soul was 
the essential duty, the only possible means of salva- 
tion. Thomas a Kempis insists on it ; 61 Luis of 
Granada, that saintly youth too pure-minded to gaze 
upon his own mother, warns the neophyte of the 
dangers in wishing to do good to others. 62 The honest 
mind finds it hard to accept a scheme so supremely 
selfish in the light of " an ideally-normal state of man 's 
development"; and ere the world as a whole can ever 
so accept it, there needs full justification through the 
achievement of the highest creative truth. 

Objection to mysticism as an "ideally-normal state," 
and questioning of the truth so acquired, is nearly as 
old as Christianity. Under certain circumstances, this 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 359 

objection has at times taken so definite a form, that 
even the great leader and whilom mystic, Loyola, ex- 
pressed very vigorous doubts ; and sought to substitute 
the rule of obedience to defined authority. Dr. Lea, 63 
with that simple appeal to historical facts which he 
can make so distinguished, has pointed out some of 
the dangers which beset "the perilous paths of super- 
human ecstasy" in the past, and which it were well 
not wholly to forget in the latitudinarianism of the 
present. Spain was long free from mystical tendencies, 
and, when they began to appear, the Church made 
systematic efforts to uproot them. This was necessary 
for self-preservation, as has already been noted; but 
Dr. Lea 64 makes it very striking when he shows that 
for one Teresa, one John of the Cross, there existed 
hundreds of self -deluded illuminati, who differed from 
them only as failure differs from success. These were 
regarded as a direct menace to the Church, and came 
under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. 

As early as 1616, 65 theologians decided that special 
revelations from on high were no proof of sanctity; 
and the trials of the mystics F. Ortiz and Maria 
Cazalla, settled in the negative their claims to be un- 
der special guidance, and exempt from the general 
rules laid down for the use of sinners. The persecu- 
tion and torture of these unfortunates came as the 
result of their assertions. Epidemics of a mystical 
character, such as that in the convent of Placido in 
16 30, 66 and at Louviers and Loudun, 67 some years later, 
were handled with like severity. They concern us 
here only as they prove the existence of contemporary 
doubt. Even in the ages of credulity, the human in- 






360 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

tellect raised itself at moments above the level of 
superstition to ask these illuminati, as we ask them, 
for results. Where, asked the Church, are the crea- 
tions of your genius, what are the truths of your rev- 
elation ? When the claimant chanced to be a creature 
of convincing mental powers joined to a magnetic per- 
sonality, his superiority was immediately accepted as 
proof of his Divine favor. If he displayed no such 
qualities, then the reverence due a saint turned speed- 
ily into the horror due an heretic. "The Church/' 
says Dr. Lea, "was in the unfortunate position of be- 
ing committed to the belief in special manifestations 
of supernatural power, while it was confessedly unable 
to determine whether they came from heaven or hell. 
This had long been recognized as one of the most 
treacherous pit-falls. ... As early as the twelfth 
century, Richard of St. Victor warns his disciples to 
beware of it, and Aquinas points out that trances may 
come from God, from the demon, or from bodily affec- 
tions. ' ' John Gerson endeavored to meet this danger 
by forming a set of diagnostic rules; John of Avila 
added his warning against delusion; while the histo- 
rian comments that all this confusion was ' ' merely an- 
other instance of the failure of humanity in its efforts 
to interpret the Infinite. " 68 It is only to-day that 
scholars seem confident of their interpretation, that 
they accord the mystics a complete credulity and ac- 
ceptation such as they never received in the past. For 
all of ten centuries, the mind of the Church is seen 
to fluctuate between the state of credulity and the 
struggle against it; between fear and knowledge. 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 361 

Fluctuations between these opposite points of view 
often lasted long after the subject was in his grave. 
The revelations of Maria d'Agreda, which had for ti- 
tle "The Mystic City of God," were placed on the 
Index in 1681, taken off in 1686, condemned in France 
by the Sorbonne in 1696, and finally allowed to cir- 
culate among the faithful in 1716, "thus furnish- 
ing," comments Dr. Lea, "another example of the 
difficulty of differentiating between sanctity and 
heresy. ' ' 69 Even the Inquisition itself grew, to use 
the same historian's phrase, "rationalistic in its treat- 
ment of these cases"; 70 for in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, it sent one case to an insane asylum, and in 
1817, ordered yet another to obtain medical advice. 
The Middle Ages, in the person of St. Bonaventura, 
may even be found commenting on a certain passage 
from Richard of St. Victor — where he describes the 
highest grade of Divine love as producing an apparent 
idiocy. 71 The very conjunction of these terms denotes 
that the mediaeval mind had not lost the power of 
judgment by comparison. And if this be true, surely 
the mind of the twentieth century has an equal right 
to ask for definite results before rendering a final ver- 
dict. 

The modern theorist, therefore, has not aided us to 
understand this complex and delicate subject ; he has 
rather confused than cleared it. On the one hand, his 
reverence, on the other, his contempt, for what he finds 
incomprehensible, places him at a disadvantage toward 
his subject and thus toward his reader. The latter, if 
he would know anything of the mystic, must shut his 



362 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

ears to the clamor of theory and open them only to the 
voices from the past, as contained in the documents of 
spiritual history and autobiography. 

That the Church was originally rich in the docu- 
ments of mystical confession — particularly those ad- 
dressed to the spiritual director and bequeathed to 
him after death — admits of no possible doubt: the 
marvel is that so few, comparatively speaking, are ex- 
tant in their integrity. For this result, it would seem 
that the standard of biography the Church has chosen 
to adopt must be responsible ; otherwise weeks of care- 
ful search among the wonderful indices of the great 
and lesser Bollandists, must have yielded a larger 
number of valid examples. 

The feeling that it is necessary to publish a reli- 
gious confession intact, is extremely modern. More- 
over, it is a scientific feeling, and springs from a 
sense of scientific obligation. The Church has never 
felt it; by the nature of things never could feel it. 
Even to-day she rather prefers that the devout should 
peruse his Augustin in a carefully edited little volume 
with most of its frank humanity omitted. The faith- 
ful are not forbidden to read the full edition of the 
confessions of any saint ; but the book which is placed 
within their easy reach is not the full edition. The 
Church's authority, in this regard as in others, exerts 
itself to suppress individualism and to maintain a due 
attitude of reverence. The mystic is the supreme in- 
dividualist, and for this reason the Church has for 
centuries looked upon him askance. Her attitude 
resembles that of the colonel of a regiment who should 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 863 

find that one of his privates claimed to be in re- 
ceipt of special orders from the commander-in-chief, 
transmitted to him individually, and outside of the 
ordinary channels. Such presumptuous zeal comes 
near to mutiny; thus the Church has tended to treat 
as mutineers such bodies as the Jansenists, such indi- 
viduals as Mme. Guyon. For every mystic she has 
canonized, she has silenced ten. 72 

In the preface to the Works of John of the Cross, 
the learned translator remarks that he has altered the 
words of the saint ' ' en adoucissant les propositions un 
peu dures, en temperant celles qui sont trop subtiles 
et trop metaphysiques " ; 73 and this same idea is car- 
ried further in an approbatory letter from the Uni- 
versity of Alcala, which declares that in the works 
of this saint "naught has been found contrary to the 
Catholic Faith. ' ' "In fact, ' ' proceeds the letter, ' ' all 
these works are valuable both for good morals, and to 
govern spiritually inclined persons, and to disengage 
them from any illusions which they may suffer if they 
make too much of their state of visions and revela- 
tions. ' ' 74 John of Avila warns his pious reader in 
positive terms against dangerous illusions, or the 
desire of things singular and supernatural, as 
denoting a spirit of wicked pride and curiosity. 
Many passages of a similar kind might be cited to 
show that the Church felt herself fully justified in 
editing, excising, and freely altering the works of all 
mystics, whether great or small, which came into her 
possession. 75 

This custom has naturally increased the difficulties 
of the lay investigator. True, some of the saints have 



364 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

been great figures, whose records meant so much to the 
world at large that they outlived and escaped this dis- 
cipline, but these are few. Pious exhortation and 
pious comparison being the ideal of these biographers, 
the facts about the subject are considered of relatively 
small importance. No attempt is made to verify 
legend, or to substantiate miracle; the narratives of 
contemporary witnesses are not questioned; and 
usually the bull of canonization will be printed as the 
single "piece justificative. ' ' Where an actual auto- 
biography exists, it has been so transposed, or so in- 
corporated into the text, as to nullify its value. 76 
Even the Bollandists, the splendor of whose biographi- 
cal achievement dazzles the humble-minded, — even 
these great historians seem to have no feeling what- 
ever for the necessity of shifting the legend from the 
facts. 

Many of the earlier French and Italians suffer 
editing at the most incompetent hands. When the 
editor is more capable, his insistence on his sub- 
ject's sanctity under all circumstances may stand 
wholly in the way of accuracy. Augustin 77 suffers 
from this attitude, when his plain statement of his sins 
is blandly misinterpreted as the exaggeration due to 
his saintly humility. It is even more irritating in the 
biographer of Mme. de Chantal, 78 when that saintly 
lady abandoned the duties of her houseful of children 
for the more exciting transports of the cloister. 

Moreover, this method — or rather this lack of 
method — has worked a more serious injury still, by 
depriving history of the elucidation possible only 
through the study of defined groups. Isolated and 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION S65 

edited in the manner we have just described, these rec- 
ords cease to reflect each other. No group-sentiment 
is preserved, no group-characteristics are manifested. 
' ' Sans doute, ' ' observes a recent biographer, ' ' rien ne 
ressemble a une vie de saint comme une autre vie de 
saint " ; 79 yet there are diversities caused by race and 
by development which it would have been worth our 
while to determine. To be deprived of this matter 
over so long a period is a misfortune, and one which 
has served to narrow the field of investigation in a 
very hampering manner. This is probably the cause 
why the psychologists — of whatever camp — base their 
conclusions on the data obtained from three or four 
cases only, Teresa oftenest, or Suso, or Mme. Guyon. 
Comparison by means of groups is denied them. 

Yet, however the lives of the saints resemble one 
another, it grows more and more evident that one can- 
not fairly estimate sanctity by considering one or two 
great individuals. The documents remaining may be 
all too few, but they are at least enough to demon- 
strate the futility of any such attempt. Take the cases 
of Teresa and Loyola, for example. Teresa had an 
organizing mind, she was an efficient, vigorous, and 
intelligent woman. Loyola had an organizing mind, 
he was a soldier, a courtier, and a practical man. 
Yet if one were to use these two cases on which to 
build a general theory of sanctity, how far would he 
wander from the truth! One critic of this subject 
lays emphasis on the presence in the mystic's heart of 
what he names " vital sanctity" 80 rather than on any 
manifestations of special phenomena. This term is 
rather too vague to be convincing. On the other 



366 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

hand, Delacroix appears to think that mysticism may 
be adequately studied only from the examples of the 
great mystics, just because their constructive genius 
separates them definitely from all cases suffering a 
neuropathical stigma. Theory here, as elsewhere on 
this question, is decidedly a priori. 

It were well to pause and consider the docu- 
ment itself, rather than its critics. The general im- 
pression it has left upon the mind has been accu- 
rately drawn by Delacroix. 81 "Les mystiques," he 
writes, "n 'ecrivent leur vie qu'a une epoque ou ils 
sont deja, avances dans les voies interieures. . . . Les 
documents qu'ils nous donnent ont le caractere de 
souvenirs et de memoires, beaucoup plus que celui de 
journal ou de notes. ... Si disposees que soient les 
mystiques a l'observation interieure et a l'analyse per- 
sonnels, l'idee du document scientifique leur est tout- 
a-fait etrangere. Ils ecrivent, soit sur un ordre in- 
terieur, soit sur l'ordre d'un directeur. Du plus, au 
moment qu'ils ecrivent ... ils ont deja l'idee du 
caractere de ces etats, . . . l'idee d'une suite, d'un 
progres. ' ' 82 The significance of this conception of a 
progressive state to the mystic, has already been men- 
tioned and will be later dealt with. As an idea it had 
much influence upon their presentation of their ma- 
terial, as upon their interpretation of it. From the 
mediaeval cases we cannot expect to gain such classi- 
fied and detailed information as the Quakers, under 
very different influences, felt it necessary to leave in 
their testimonies ; and the lack of all group-character- 
istics is more serious still. From the scanty and 
cloudy records of the early Middle Ages, much of 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 367 

value may yet be drawn; and it is possible therein to 
trace the beginning of certain tendencies, which were 
to have no small share in the development of men's 
thought. 

The earliest important personal documents of the 
mystical type are the revelations to saints and 
cloistered persons in the Middle Ages, which precede, 
by several centuries, those confessions of the Gottes- 
freunde, whose fragments form what is probably the 
earliest mystical group. These revelations, although 
submitting to all the influences of contagion and much 
affecting one another's style, lack that central idea 
which is necessary to bind a group together. They 
concern matters of varying importance, and are scat- 
tered throughout the countries and cloisters of Europe. 
In most cases they are dictated by the seer to a scribe, 
or monastic clerk, or a director, who writes down in 
labored Latin their prophecies and visions of heaven 
and of hell. 83 

Such are the records left by Gertrude of Eisleben 
and Mechtilde, by Hildegarde of Bingen and her 
friend Elizabeth of Schonau; by Brigitte of Sweden, 
Catherine of Bologna, and Franchise Romaine; by 
Gerlac Petersen, the anchoress Juliana of Norwich, 
and the anonymous monk of Evesham. 

Among these, that of Hildegarde is the only record 
which contributes detailed personal matter of any real 
value. This extraordinary woman includes much of 
her youthful history, and is particular about such de- 
tails as her age at different crises, in a manner un- 
known to the others. Of the Gottesfreunde records 
which follow and are intimately connected with the 



368 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

revelations, we possess but few full documents, — the 
autobiographies of Merswin and Suso, Tauler's let- 
ters and sermons, the journals of Margaret and Chris- 
tina Ebnerin. These are sufficient to give a vivid 
picture of their quaint and sensitive piety ; but what- 
ever introspective tendency they display is overborne 
by the desire to speak of things revealed. 

The vividness with which these long-ago mystics 
describe their religious experiences, is to us, to-day, the 
most striking feature of their records. The other 
world appears to them with all the details of color and 
form that may be suggested by their mediaeval feel- 
ing for decoration. Thus Baptiste Varani describes 
Christ as a handsome youth, dressed in white and gold, 
and with curly hair, and Angela da Foligno saw 
him a handsome boy, magnificently adorned. 84 Jesus 
seemed like his "own brother" to Ubertino da Casale, 
who likewise identified himself with the persons and 
events of the New Testament. Their visions are per- 
sonal, objective, and picturesque, to a degree amazing 
and naif ; they are also, as Tylor 85 observes, strikingly 
wanting in originality: "The stiff Madonnas, with 
their crowns and petticoats, still transfer themselves 
from the pictures on cottage walls to appear in spirit- 
ual personality to peasant visionaries, as the saints 
who stood in vision before the ecstatic monks of old 
were to be known by their conventional pictorial at- 
tributes. ' ' 86 The reader has already sufficient war- 
rant for the application of the above passage, in the 
sections of this book devoted to the description of 
those phenomena. Some of the more vivid strikingly 
confirm the imitative tendencies here noticed. Says 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 869 

Mechtilde, for example: "On Esto Mihi Sunday she 
heard the beloved of her soul, Jesus, saying to her in 
the sweet whisper of love, 'Wilt thou abide with me on 
the mountain, these forty days and nights ? ' And the 
soul, ' Oh, gladly, my Lord ! ' . . . Then he showed her 
a high mountain, of wondrous greatness . . . having 
seven steps by which it was ascended, and seven foun- 
tains. And, taking her up, He came to the first step, 
which was the step of humility ' ' ; 87 and so on, through 
a long vision describing the ascent. 

Mr. Edmund Gardner (from whose sympathetic 
translation the above is condensed) remarks on its 
resemblance to the Dantean hill of Purgatory ; but in 
truth this analogy of a mountain, with steps up 
thereto, is made use of by the mystics with zealous and 
untiring banality. The steps — whether three, or 
seven, or nine — are to be read of in Dionysius, 88 in the 
St. Victors, and in St. Bonaventura, while they are re- 
iterated, with but trifling variations, in the revelations 
of later visionaries, like Angela da Foligno, Juliana of 
Norwich, Teresa, and Maria d'Agreda. This sheer, 
mechanical repetition of an idea, or, more accurately, 
of a metaphor, is surely unlike the fertility of genius, 
whose touch revivifies the outworn. The mechanical 
reiteration, moreover, is not confined to style and 
image, for it extends to the things seen, as well as to 
the manner of telling about them. Moreover, the con- 
tents of these revelations differ little — indeed, surpris- 
ingly little — from the later Methodist or Quaker 
examples. The sense of personality is hardly keener, 
although the details are more picturesque. A me- 
diaeval Catholic case is not apt to undergo the 



370 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

same pre-converted progress, his whole religious life 
dates rather from that day on which he takes the 
vows. His attitude toward fundamental questions 
holds an assurance which the Dissenter could never 
hope to feel. Yet, on the whole, the similarity of 
these instances is far more remarkable than the diver- 
sity. The fourteenth-century nun is emotionally 
stirred and troubled by certain symbols of her faith, 
exactly as the Quaker is moved by and toward the 
figures of his. M. M. Alacoque felt a piercing flame 
at the thought of the order of the Visitation; while 
Thomas Laythe fasted for a fortnight on account of 
"weights and exercises" which the idea of the Quakers 
brought upon him. John Gratton is moved "toward 
a people poor and despised, the Lord's own"; Carlo 
da Sezze was especially stirred by the idea of the 
Sacred Heart; and so on. 89 

What differences here exist result largely from a 
totally different attitude in the audiences which sur- 
round the actors in the drama. The entire problem 
of the action and reaction of the writer and his pub- 
lic, of the actor and his audience, has an especial 
significance in regard to the situation of the mediaeval 
religious. However one may estimate this attitude, he 
cannot ignore it: whether it be regarded in the light 
of faith or in the light of credulity, it becomes an im- 
portant factor in all secluded communities. What- 
ever the feeling of the Church at large, — and we have 
seen it was by no means always one of sympathy, — 
yet the mediaeval mystic played his part before an au- 
dience generally predisposed to belief. To what ex- 
tent this belief stimulated the chief performer and 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 371 

excited him to further efforts, can be judged when it 
is compared with the very different attitude existing 
to-day. Renan's observation that miracle is condi- 
tioned on the credulity of the witness, 90 would seem to 
be confirmed whatever the conditions. 

A recent writer comments on this fact in a few 
sentences relating to instances of conversion in 
prison ; 91 and it is true of the entire world to-day. 
Where the audience used to be benign, now, it is hos- 
tile ; where it was reverent, now, it is charged with sus- 
picion. The line of the norm meanwhile has so shifted 
that what seemed health to the thirteenth century, ap- 
pears disease to the twentieth. 

Personal opinion as to the value of this change may 
differ, but whether one believes it to be for good or 
ill, one cannot deny that it is responsible for an altera- 
tion of tone in the literature of religious experience, 
and also, no doubt, for a certain loss in authority and 
in distinction. 92 Whereas he once looked down upon 
an awestricken world, the mystic now must look ask- 
ance, often defiantly, upon a jeering and a sceptical 
world. This lack of sympathy has survived even the 
emotional reactions of the last quarter-century, and 
is now common to the majority of people, irrespec- 
tive of creed. Whether to-day a man's belief be 
Catholic, Protestant, or rationalistic, he will agree 
to regard with extreme suspicion any person laying 
claim to supernatural revelations or experiences. It 
thus becomes all the more necessary to handle the data 
of mysticism with caution and with sympathy, since 
the easiest manner to dispose of it, is thought by 
many to be the medical-materialistic. At no time is 



372 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

it possible without strain to hold the mind open to 
what these mystics think; indeed, as was said at the 
outset of this enquiry, the difficulties in respect to 
theory and in respect to documents, are not less when 
we come to the data. Yet these data must be ex- 
amined if the reader is to lay any foundation in his 
own mind for a conclusion on the subject. Most of 
the psychological phenomena attendant upon the via 
mystica, have already received attention in the sec- 
tion upon conversion, where they are grouped in order 
to elucidate that crisis. It has been made plain that 
in an ardent and sensitive person, such a crisis is in- 
variably, if but temporarily, mystical. In the life 
of the true mystic, however, these phenomena de- 
velop, showing a progression which must be taken 
into account, and which has a typical and effective 
result upon the personality of the subject. Most 
studies of mysticism, whatever their theory, have con- 
fined themselves to the higher examples of this type, 
using them, as Von Hugel does Catherine of Genoa, 
both as a text and as a commentary. For this reason 
they have failed to draw certain highly obvious in- 
ferences. 

It is impossible, of course, even for these writers to 
overlook the more striking conclusions reached by 
modern science ; and thus Miss Underhill 93 makes note 
of the self-hypnotization of Jacob Boehme "gazing 
fixedly at the pewter dish reflected in the sunshine,' ' 
and Loyola, seated in meditation before running 
water ; — but she makes no real study, no thorough in- 
vestigation of the instances of "misinterpreted ob- 
servation." In truth, any such study would serve to 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 373 

create insuperable difficulties in the way of founding 
and maintaining any philosophical theory of mysti- 
cism. 

There is nothing in the entire field of religious in- 
vestigation more startling than the comparisons which 
are furnished by savages, in regard to mystical phe- 
nomena. They will give pause even to the most con- 
ventional mind. If he reads that "the Zulu convert 
in a mood of heightened religious excitement will be- 
hold a snake with great eyes and very fearful; a 
leopard creeping stealthily; an enemy approaching 
with his long assegai"; 94 what comparisons are sug- 
gested by the testimony of Loyola, or Dr. Pordage, or 
Mme. Guyon, or the Mere Jeanne des Anges ? ' ' Thus 
the visionary temptations of the Hindu ascetic and the 
mediaeval saint are happening in our own day. ' ' 95 
We read that the North American Indian fasts to 
produce a similar effect, whether by vision or dream ; 
and according to the character of the vision makes his 
various decisions. Some of these decisions relate to 
his private affairs, and some to the ceremonies then 
in progress and which the fast has preceded. 96 The 
case of Catherine Wabose, the Indian already noted, 
is a vivid confirmation of these instances. She says 
particularly that during her fast and vigil she kept ex- 
pecting visions, and it was not long ere she was grati- 
fied. "Any state of the body," observes the physiolo- 
gist Miiller, 97 "expected with a certain confidence, is 
prone to ensue ' ' ; and this follows not only in cases of 
savage religion, but even where religion itself is not 
the superinducing cause. 

John Beaumont 98 quotes from Dion Cassius who 



374 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

avows that he had been divinely commanded to write 
his history. Beaumont himself had visions and heard 
tinkling bells, but no religious ideas attached to them. 
Herbert of Cherbury" received a sign, on the occa- 
sion of completing a book whose tenets were considered 
dangerous to Christianity. Philo Judseus similarly 
alludes to his Daemon; and Cardan is equally plain. 
Louis Claude de St. Martin associated his phenomenal 
revelations with philosophy. Less harmless a person, 
Henri Charles, the murderer of Mme. Gey, at Sidi- 
Mabrouk, in Algeria, observes that, after certain up- 
heavals in his faith, he turned extremely mystical and 
had visions of trees and of peasants ' cottages. ' ' I had 
begun," he writes in his " Memorial, ' ' "to love the su- 
pernatural." 10 ° These cases are merely mentioned by 
way of corrective to the general impression, fostered 
by so many of the theories now in vogue, that mysti- 
cism and mystical phenomena in themselves argue a 
high degree of religious or of moral development. As 
a matter of fact, nothing could be further from the 
truth, as is shown by such narratives as that of Marie 
de Sains, or the Mere Jeanne des Anges, or any others 
among the confessions of diabolical possession. Here 
the whole range of mystical experiences is seen dis- 
played, but with a contrary significance. Visions, 
voices, conversations with the demon, " diabolical' ' in- 
stead of "divine" espousals; such a duplication wor- 
ried the mediaeval conscience exceedingly. It might 
worry ours if the student to-day were really disposed, 
as the theorists desire, to look upon this condition as 
an "ideally normal" state. 

Instead, the facts dispose him to look upon it as a 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 375 

very artificial and abnormal condition. The facts 
show that a predisposition to mysticism does not in- 
volve either mental ability, normal excellence, or even 
religious motives. Religious emotion may, indeed, be 
the most frequent starting-point for the mystical phe- 
nomena ; but it is by no means a necessary antecedent, 
and the state takes its rise, in some cases, from purely 
physical and nervous conditions (such as occur during 
puberty), and may receive no religious color until 
later. It may be primarily religious; and it may be 
secondarily religious ; but there is no valid burden of 
proof, if one examines the facts in toto, that it is 
necessarily religious at all. 

" When the body is systematically weakened by fast- 
ings and vigils," remarks Dr. Lea, 101 " spiritual ex- 
altation is readily induced in certain natures by con- 
tinued mental concentration. ' ' And the cause may 
be what the human imagination wills. 

The section on " Conversion" furnishes a large num- 
ber of examples of the forms which this spiritual ex- 
altation may assume. These forms do not differ 
among mystics, but the progression of the mystical 
state is important and must not be forgotten. The 
sudden and transient outbreak of psychological phe- 
nomena superinduced in most persons by the excite- 
ment and strain of conversion, is very different from 
that progress along the way, which distinguishes the 
saints and the great contemplatives. Moreover, this 
progression presents some suggestive features. For 
instance, Hildegarde of Bingen, who began to see 
visions and great lights at three years old, and con- 
tinued to do so until she was seventy, penetratingly 



376 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

observes the difference between the mild beauty of the 
earlier visions, concealed by her and taken symbolic- 
ally, and the bizarre prophecies which, an old woman, 
she writes to Bernard of Clairvaux. With Suso, the 
progression is even more strikingly and vividly de- 
picted; and it was also in the experience of Jerome. 
This passing from visionary experiences of a helpful 
to those of a horrible kind, may be noted also in 
Guibert, Othloh, Antoinette Bonrignon, Angelique 
Arnanld, de Marsay and Mme. Guyon — it is an espe- 
cial characteristic of the earlier mysticism. Angela 
da Foligno became a recluse after the death of her 
husband and sons. At the " Fourteenth Spiritual 
Step, ' ' her visions, sparing before, grew frequent, and 
were supplemented by dreams. Her bodily suffer- 
ings and soul-torments were incessant thereafter. 102 
Jeanne de St. M. Deleloe at first revolted against con- 
vent-rule. Soon, however, she came to love solitude 
and silence ; and then began to hear interior words, to 
be comforted by the Lord, who showed her the mys- 
teries of the Faith. Her health, never strong, suffered 
from the seclusion; yet she thinks she would have re- 
mained humbly happy in the favor of God, but for the 
doubts of her superior, who tries to mortify and humil- 
iate her in every way. Up to this time, her visions 
had been of a gentle and reassuring character, but un- 
der the suspicion of presumption they became painful, 
horrible, and perverse. This influence of suggestion 
by others upon the character of the psychological 
phenomena of the mystics, has rarely been pointed out 
by students of these manifestations. The same effect 
is to be noted in the " Apology' ' of Dame Gertrude 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 377 

More, who was "perplexed and tossed with a thou- 
sand imaginations and overwhelmed with miseries — 
yea, almost desperate" — from the unwise advice of 
her director. She went to another priest, ' ' and found 
myself in fifteen days so quieted that I wondered." 
The effect of the hysterical Pere Surin upon the 
hysterical Sceur Jeanne des Anges, is a striking ex- 
ample of this personal influence. It is strongly sug- 
gested, also, in the documents left by the Gottes- 
freunde, in Germany, who vitally affected one an- 
other. 103 According to the doubt, however, as to 
whether the mysterious Friend of God in the Ober- 
land, who in turn harrowed the souls of John Tauler, 
Rulman Merswin, Margaret Ebnerin, and others, was 
a real person or a symbolical figure, this case cannot 
be given as conclusive. Richard Rolle, the hermit of 
Hampole, says of the spiritual life, ' ' the process truly, 
as I will show, solitary life behooves me to preach." 
Maligned by slanderers after his conversion, he wan- 
dered from cell to cell in search of peace, always hear- 
ing heavenly music and saying quaintly: "Forsooth 
my thought continually to mirth of song was changed. ' ' 
This expression by Rolle of the mystical life in terms 
of music, is original with him and very lovely : it seems 
to have lasted all his days and to have been the main 
form in which the love of God took meaning to his 
mind. Rolle gives us no further details ; but a similar 
progressive spiritual experience befell Jonathan Ed- 
wards. The nun Veronique Giuliani does not give the 
starting-point of her progressive mysticism. Christ 
crowned her with thorns during prayer, and the pain 
remained about her brows, more or less, for twelve 



378 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

years. In another vision the Child pierces her with a 
golden staff, and, touching the place with her handker- 
chief, she sees it spotted with blood. Mary of the 
Angels, Carmelite, had a deep sense of piety, but again 
personal influence, in the shape of a kind, sensible 
priest, curbed her childish morbidity. It is unfortu- 
nately suggested to her that the grief which she felt on 
parting with her family to take the veil (she is only 
fifteen), is the Devil's work; thus leading her to begin 
the practice of dreadful austerities, which plunge her 
into gloom and despair. The reader's attention has 
already been called to an idiosyncrasy of the Evil 
One that the more one noticed his attacks, the more 
furious they grew ; and that in the few — painfully few 
■ — cases in which they were ignored altogether, they 
vanished with a remarkable rapidity. 104 Mary of the 
Angels noticed them even at their tentative stage ; the 
assaults grew violent and well-nigh physical, tak- 
ing chiefly the form of giving her hideous-, impure 
thoughts, while devils annoyed her when at prayer 
by their cries and howls. In the more modern case of 
another Carmelite, Therese of the Holy Child, the 
confessant was one of five sisters who all became nuns. 
Her innocence was so great that on taking the veil at 
eighteen, her director told her she had never mortally 
sinned. Yet a terrible reaction of gloom at once be- 
set her. Her death, at twenty-five, of consumption, 
put a period to what was a nearly perfect type of the 
mystical progress. A longer development in A. C. 
Emmerich carries us through all the childish visions 
(at six she beheld the Creation and the fall of man) 
into the later periods of horror, when she could not eat, 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 379 

and during which she developed the stigmata. Her 
visions and ecstasies were frequent, much resembling 
those of Maria d'Agreda. In her last illness we have 
read how her complacency passed the bounds, so that 
even her director had his doubts. The famous abbess 
whom she resembled gives full account of her own mys- 
tical progress, describing how phantoms beset her in the 
shape of wild beasts ; how she suffered during prayer, 
and how horror drove her nearly into open blasphemy. 
"A light soft and clear" she declared accompanied 
her visions, wherein she beheld the life of the Virgin 
Mary. She especially observes that writing calmed 
her. The nun Osanna Andreasi (who, by the way, 
was thought by her parents to be epileptic) tells us 
that at six years old the Child Jesus appeared to her, 
and, describing to her his love for children, avowed 
that he would teach her how to become a saint. Later, 
an angel led her to behold the universe under the law 
of God. A modern case, Mary of the Divine Heart, 
began by holding intimate talks with Christ, "all 
interior"; but these were soon followed by the cus- 
tomary dreadful glooms and violent periods of de- 
spair. Illustrations drawn from English dissenters 
further elucidate the progressive nature of the mysti- 
cal process. Joanna Southcott, who began with start- 
ling dreams and visions, rapidly came to closer grips 
with Satan ; and in one conflict, lasting for ten days, 
she was beaten black and blue. The same progres- 
sion is found in the Mormon examples. Joseph Smith, 
at the first, claimed only to be a mouthpiece, a mere 
receiver of revelations; but he is soon a seer, and a 
crystal-gazer, an occultist, faith-healer, and a caster-out 



380 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of devils. Those fights with the Devil told by Mormon 
elders, read much like Joanna Southcott's, Guibert de 
Nogent's mother's, or the abbot Othloh's. In Joan- 
na 's ease ill-health and hysteria seem a definite cause ; 
while the example of "misinterpreted observation, ' ' 
i. e., dropsy instead of divine pregnancy which ended 
both her Divine claims and her life, would be gro- 
tesque were it not so pathetic. 

Alice Hayes, Quaker, resembles Mme. Guyon in her 
interior progress and her outward persecutions; and 
Joseph Hoag, also a Friend, experienced as many 
visions, reactions, and progressive mystical phenomena 
as ever did Suso or Teresa. Other marked instances 
of Quaker mysticism may be found in the cases of 
Margaret Lucas and of Samuel Neale. The custom 
of the Friends, to turn immediately upon conversion 
to a career of active ministry and service, makes the 
mystical examples rarer than among the mediaeval her- 
mits or the monastic cases. Yet no one can read 
their testimonies without being convinced that the 
progressive condition is identical, though it is one 
which needs the seclusion, the asceticism, and the 
regimen of the cloister, to develop fully and charac- 
teristically. 

To pass final judgment upon the facts, may be 
wisely left to the open-minded student of human 
nature. The review of these testimonies should give 
him at least a foundation for his decision. He may 
not be able to formulate any explanation of the state 
of mystical progression, whose votaries have for so 
many centuries played their parts before the audi- 
ence of the world. Mysticism may speak to him of 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 381 

various influences ; being a term so wide that he may 
not desire to restrict it to the narrow field of per- 
sonal experience. It may mean to him more what it 
meant to Augustin or to Amiel — the delicate response 
of human emotion to the appeal of the vastness and 
mystery of the universe. "I will pass then beyond 
this power of my nature also, rising by degrees unto 
Him who made me. . . . See, I am mounting up 
through my mind towards thee who abidest above 
me . . . ' ' 105 is the cry of the genius-mystic. 

To-day, one is apt to forget that it is genius which 
feels this exultation. The judgment of the reader here 
is asked simply on the one limited and much-misun- 
derstood field of personal experience, and upon the 
theorists thereof. It is for him to say, when he looks 
at A. C. Emmerich, M. de Mar say, Antoinette Bourig- 
non, whether "the mono-ideism of the mystic is ra- 
tional. ' ' Such examples as Pere Surin, Joanna South- 
cott, Joseph Smith, Maria d'Agreda, Osanna Andreasi, 
M. M. Alacoque, Mere Jeanne des Anges, Therese of 
the Holy Child, may assist him to decide whether it is 
true that "the mystics are almost always persons of 
robust intelligence and marked practical and intellec- 
tual ability." Survey of the records as they stand 
may lead him to question further whether the mys- 
tical way is, truly, the way of higher life, and if that 
state be in truth a state of ideally normal develop- 
ment. To readjust his attitude, he has only to con- 
sider such undeniable facts as the lack of creation 
from these so-called creators; the paucity of truth 
obtained for the world by those who claim that they 
reach it at its Divine source; and the dissociation 



382 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of ethical standards from religious standards which 
is the fundamental characteristic of mysticism. 
Further, it is made plain that the world's reverence 
for these mystics has been due primarily to centuries 
of misinterpreted observation of the phenomena of 
mysticism. Once understood, how changed perforce 
would be the conclusions of the very subject himself ! 
Would Robert Blair, 106 saintly man, have considered 
himself divinely converted if he had realized the 
strength of that wine in the milk-posset ¥ Reason has 
caused from time to time strong reactions in favor of 
such understanding; but the natural inclination to 
consider a thing important in proportion as it appears 
obscure, has prevented such reaction from being car- 
ried sufficiently far. At the moment, the c ' will to be- 
lieve ' ' that this state, since it exists, is one of value and 
meaning, is very strong. A mystical wind is just now 
sweeping over the fields of thought. Many follow the 
example of the director of Mary of the Angels and 
cure by command. It were well, in view of prevalent 
ideas, that we examine and reexamine — not the gener- 
alizations, but the facts, the specific, particular, and 
concrete facts, on which all valid theory must neces- 
sarily be based. The verdict, then, when soberly and 
thoughtfully rendered, will have the weight of an in- 
duction. 

It is time to speak a word of warning in the ears of 
those to whom criticism and history afford unfamiliar 
methods by which to achieve results. This book is 
not one of philosophical speculation, nor of metaphysi- 
cal theory. Neither is it a psychological study of re- 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 383 

ligious experience, so much as an examination of the 
material available for such a study. Rather it is an 
attempt, through classification and analysis, to de- 
termine what the data in the case of individual reli- 
gious experience really are, and what, if any, conclu- 
sions may be logically drawn from them. For, if no 
logical conclusions may be so drawn, it is at least a 
gain in honesty to face and acknowledge the fact. 
This acknowledgment in itself will have a quality of 
novelty, since it has been almost a tradition to take 
conclusions on this subject for granted. Very modern, 
indeed, is the student who pauses to ask if a valid 
induction can be made on the subject of religion. 
More recent still is he who endeavors to bring the 
chaotic and heterogeneous material furnished by 
antiquity, by history, and by literature within the 
reach of scientific method. Rightly or wrongly, men 
have pointed to these instances, and made use of them 
in order to reach certain conclusions, ever since Job's 
friends gathered to condole with him on his many 
misfortunes. The experiences themselves have re- 
mained little altered by the centuries; but our inter- 
pretation of them changes almost with each generation. 
Maudsley 107 has made note of the indisputable fact 
that truth obtained through ecstasy always resulted in 
confirming the views of the subject. If a Christian, 
his " reason- transcending truths" were always Chris- 
tian in their significance ; but if a Brahman, they were 
Brahman. Thus, an Unitarian 's visions differed from 
those of a Trinitarian, Teresa's from Swedenborg 's, 
and so forth. The process must be limited and gov- 
erned by the predisposition of the subject's mind, 



384 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

which does not affect the simple essential nature and 
identity of these experiences. It is fair to use the 
Book of Job as a case in point, even though we know 
it to be complex in form, and often theological in 
intention. What happened to Eliphaz the Temanite, 
seven hundred years before Christ, seems perfectly 
familiar to us to-day,- yet we do not draw the same 
conclusions which he drew from that occurrence. 

"In thoughts from the vision of the night, when deep sleep 

falleth on men, 
Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my 

bones to shake. 
Then a spirit passed before my face; and the hair of my 

flesh stood up; 
It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof; 
An image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I 

heard a voice, saying, 
Shall mortal man be more just than God? 
Shall a man be more pure than his maker?" ios 

This revelation forms the starting-point of a doc- 
trine of consolation, placed by the speaker in the 
mouth of the vision for the sake of its greater au- 
thority. It is nearly twenty-five hundred years since 
the words were written which are put into the mouth 
of this character, yet their accent of vivid personal 
experience is the accent of yesterday. Keen and 
full of terror was that moment to the writer, were 
he really Eliphaz or another. But the instant he 
turns from describing the vision, and his feelings when 
it befell, to repeating the words he thinks it said, and 
the doctrinal conclusion he believes it reached, — that 
instant our conviction ceases. We perceive an intel- 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 385 

lectual idea superimposed on an emotional experience ; 
and we recognize therein a common fallacy of human 
reasoning. For, to rely on that fundamental law, the 
identity of our common nature, and on all the valid 
records of psychological experience, does not mean 
that we are to accept the conclusions of the subjects as 
we accept their data. It means, in fact, just the con- 
trary; for their conclusions tend to be wrong, if for 
no other reason than because the experience is their 
own. We find them, for instance, attributing to the 
revelation their own ideas of intellectual quality subtly 
elaborated. The mind of Eliphaz conceived a certain 
doctrine, the imagination of Eliphaz beheld a vision — 
and the two are by him linked together without hesita- 
tion. A similar elaboration is to be observed in the 
case of Paul ; 109 who asked, in his first narrative, 
1 'What shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said unto 
me, Arise, and go into Damascus ; and there it shall be 
told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to 
do." This is a simple and direct command; but in 
the second narrative observe how it becomes elabo- 
rated and detailed. 

"But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have 
appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a 
minister and a witness both of these things which 
thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will 
appear unto thee ; 

"Delivering thee from the people, and from the 
Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, 

"To open their eyes, and to turn them from dark- 
ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, 
that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inherit- 



386 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

ance among them which are sanctified by faith that 
is in me." 110 

In this speech the Lord not only seems to tell Paul 
why he appeared to him and that he will reappear, 
but also describes what Paul must do, and what the 
Gentiles are going to do, along the line of certain doc- 
trines notably Pauline. Far easier were it to accept 
Kenan's explanation of the ophthalmia and the thun- 
derstorm, than to accept Paul's inference as to the 
full, doctrinal meaning of his vision. We feel that 
he simply places his own doctrines in the vision's 
mouth, just as did Eliphaz, and drew similar quite 
unwarranted conclusions from the experience. A 
cruder case of this tendency is shown by Joseph Smith, 
whose visionary revelations, first wholly general and 
spiritual, become progressively detailed according to 
his particular needs. 111 

Misinterpreted observation is frequently responsible 
for erroneous inferences of this kind. It surprises us 
to-day to read Jonathan Edwards's naif remark, that, 
during the Great Awakening, "God has in many re- 
spects gone much beyond his usual and ordinary 
way." 112 Edwards gives also an instance of Satan's 
raging, and God's withdrawal, in the suicide of a 
worthy person, "who," he then adds, "was of a fam- 
ily that are exceedingly prone to the disease of mel- 
ancholy, and his mother was killed with it. ' ' 11S The 
pages of this book have already been crowded with 
similar minor misinterpretations. Blair's ecstasy fol- 
lowing the milk-posset, 114 and John Conran's conver- 
sion after the "sweet liquor called shrub" 115 are sin- 
cere examples. Colonel Gardiner's vision, following 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 387 

the fall from his horse, is evidently another. Various 
saintly and cloistered women draw what seems to our 
minds unwarranted conclusions on the subject of their 
relations toward God; and the reader's own experi- 
ence will furnish him with other instances. It must 
not be forgotten that Luther thought his " bright vi- 
sion" to be the Devil's work. 

To suspect the conclusion, while respecting the in- 
formation of the subject, becomes a necessary canon 
for this study. Man is never more egotistical than 
when under the stress of a religious upheaval. The 
disorganized Ego tends to force itself perpetually 
upon the attention, just as a disorganized digestion 
would. A man cannot forget himself ; and in propor- 
tion as he becomes important to himself, he becomes 
important (in his own mind) to the powers of Good 
and Evil, to Satan and to God. Each narrative must 
be sifted of this element and the bare occurrences sub- 
tracted, before they can be profitably used as mat- 
ter of comparison. In the proper interpretation of 
these experiences lies all their validity for us. Then, 
if we are not to accept the subject's inference as to 
his own magnitude in the sight of God, if the facts 
seem not to warrant us in accepting the verdict of 
the critic who would class him with genius, — what 
conclusion are we to reach? Must we be forced to 
take the attitude of the medical-materialist — and 
finally dispose of the whole matter by shifting it to 
the realm of pathology? Must we hereafter think of 
Paul as an epileptoid, and of Teresa as an hysterical ? 
Must we set them in the same class as Joseph Smith 
and Joanna Southcott? 



388 EELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

It were useless to deny that the French school has 
much weight on its side — and to many the solution 
of disease appears the simplest solution. 116 The ar- 
guments from hysteria, the arguments from insanity, 
tend to develop striking analogies in certain directions, 
and some of our cases would seem to come very close 
to them. But here again it must not be forgotten, 
that things which are equal to the same thing are equal 
to each other. Were our cases all Pere Surins or 
Jeannes des Anges, or Sainte-Chantals, or John 
Crooks, or M. M. Alacoques or Joseph Smiths, we 
could hardly escape the reasoning of the medical- 
materialist. The point is that they are not. The same 
differences and difficulties of degree obtain here, 
[fust so long as one can point to Augustin, to Paul, to 
Teresa, to Wesley, to Loyola, one cannot in justice 
nor in common sense set down the forces which under- 
lay their religious experience to the manifestation of 
disease. On the contrary, just so long as one can 
point to the many contemplatives of the type of Maria 
d'Agreda, or Joanna Southcott, one cannot in jus- 
tice nor in common sense set down the forces which 
underlay their religious experience to the manifes- 
tation of genius, or to an "ideally normal" develop- 
ment. The one link which binds these dissimilar 
personalities is the presence of this religious mani- 
festation. That they hold this experience in common 
over the centuries, should, of course, be a vitally sug- 
gestive fact for the theorist, yet it must not cause him 
to rush into too-hasty generalization. 

The tendency of the modern student to use only the 
more striking instances and individualities in support 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 389 

of his special tenets, has been largely responsible for 
his attitude. Such an one founds a whole theory of 
mysticism, for instance, in two volumes, upon the 
single case of Catherine of Genoa ; 117 and it is, to 
our thinking, exactly as if he wrote of the elephant, 
and confined his observations to the King of Burmah's 
celebrated cream-colored specimen; or as if he based 
his study of twins exclusively upon the pair known as 
the Siamese. It is in the study of the mean, rather 
than in that of the extremes, that the truth will be 
found to lie ; and this is even more exactly the case in 
regard to an investigation which deals with human 
beings. 

Yet the reader is standing ready to remind us that 
what is not health must be disease, and vice versa. 
Perhaps; so long as we insist on applying terms of 
this character to the subject rather than those more 
flexible. There are conditions in our lives which can- 
not be accurately described either as health or as 
disease. Pregnancy, for instance, properly to be de- 
fined only by the term process, may become normal 
or pathological according to the heredity and consti- 
tution of the subject, her nutrition, and the accidents 
which may affect its course. It is suggestive to us 
here, simply because of the conjunction of this process 
with a result. 

Thus are we again confronted with that question 
of result, which we persist in thinking is the very heart 
of the matter. All the pathological theories of genius 
collapse utterly when they reach this same point — 
the result. All the "ideally normal' ' theories of 
mysticism collapse utterly when they reach this point 



390 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

— the result. The discussion of Shelley's degeneracy, 
and the possible epilepsy of Csesar and Kichelieu, come 
to nothing, when one faces the irrefragable result of 
their creative intellectual power. That exultant cry 
of the mystic that he — he only — has grasped the divine 
truth — fails wholly when one asks him for a result, 
which is but Nothingness. The medical-materialist 
has not been able to produce from his sanatorium or 
maison de sante, any work of creative genius ; nor can 
the mystical theorist show to our satisfaction that 
the saint has made any plainer to us a single one of 
life's great mysteries. "No psychological meaning," 
asserts Dr. Hirsch, "can be attached to the word 
genius. . . . All men of genius possess common 
traits, tut they wre not traits characteristic of gen- 
ius." 118 When this is remembered, and also that "in 
psychology, every man is species sui generis" a great 
point will have been gained for our better interpreta- 
tion of the phenomena under consideration. 

It is evident that, by reason of their fixed char- 
acter, the terms " health' ' and "disease" should be 
finally eliminated from this discussion. Too long 
has the reader been held within the limitations they 
impose upon his mind. Eather would one substitute 
the idea of process, and define the emotional religious 
experience as a process which develops in many of us 
and to which all of us are more or less innately sub- 
ject. This development has been seen to be various, 
changing with the character of the person and with 
the influences surrounding him. At the beginning, it 
is governed by certain fixed conditions, which have 
been found to vary practically not at all in different 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 391 

countries and races, nor during the progress of the 
ages. By means of these fixed conditions alone has it 
been possible to study the process, as one may study 
anything that is stable and defined. They are classi- 
fied for the purpose of this work under one head, 
whereas the manifestations of the process, when in be- 
ing, fall properly under another classification. The 
object of such classification is merely to separate the 
inducing conditions surrounding the process, from the 
process itself, — a differentiation which is almost never 
made by the subject, nor by those immediately in touch 
with him. Their tendency to ignore the favoring, 
antecedent conditions of his experience, has been per- 
petuated in the work even of serious scientific ana- 
lysts, who fail for this reason to see the saint and 
his situation as they really are. Thus, the Church's 
interpretation of Augustin's religious experience has 
been fluctuating and fallacious for centuries; thus, 
Mme. Guyon has never been properly understood; 
thus, Guibert 's heredity — so striking an influence ! — 
is ignored ; and the suggestive development of natures 
like Loyola and Teresa is passed over, or treated as 
if it were wholly homogeneous. 

When we have determined that this form of experi- 
ence is in the nature of a process, we would seem 
merely to have shifted the difficulty, and not to have 
done it away ; to have changed the terms, yet not have 
explained their meaning. The ordinary person may 
not be obliged to have what actually occurs pointed 
out to him — but he will yet ask why and wherefore. 
Why does the nature of this or that person change so 
entirely that for the time being it is unrecognizable? 



392 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Wherefore these exaggerated terrors, this unbalanced 
sensitiveness, this exaltation, this uplifted passion? 
Something has set up a disuniting force within what 
we have chosen in these pages to call the nebula of 
Personality, and Something, after a troublous lapse 
of time, causes it healthily to integrate once more. 
Such, in brief, is the process with which most of us 
are familiar under the title of emotional religious ex- 
perience. To what is this process due ? What causes 
it? The world has had but one coherent answer to 
these questions: "It is due to the spontaneous up- 
springing of our religious instinct." 

We have said that this is not a work of speculation 
— yet speculation of a sort there must be in every work 
which attempts to relate the facts it has analyzed to 
universal underlying conditions. The particular con- 
crete example must be governed by broad and gen- 
eral conditions of evolution. Speculation, therefore, 
in the classic sense, forms a necessary part of every 
historical and scientific theory. Fortunately, in this 
case, the pathway appears to emerge on one of the 
highways of the intellect, whereon it has trodden with- 
out ceasing, almost from the first moment that it 
walked alone. Religion, however studied, has been a 
subject contemplated from the dawn of intellectual 
life. And from the very dawn, this same answer 
about religious instinct, under its varying forms, has 
been made without ceasing to the dissatisfied investi- 
gator. 

Moreover, it has been made from very different 
points of view, it has tended to be the common and 
universal assumption underlying every species of 



MYSTICISM: ITS INTERPRETATION 393 

argument. That a religious instinct exists, that its 
presence in the nature of the savage accounts for 
his primitive fears, and for his primitive worship, — 
this has been the theory alike of the divine and the lay- 
man, of the metaphysician and of the scientist. Until 
the middle of the nineteenth century, this assumption 
was the meeting-ground of minds totally dissimilar — 
here the Deist joined with the Catholic, here a Rous- 
seau could meet in agreement both with a Bossuet 
and a Voltaire. However variously these opposing 
views may have accounted for the presence of this 
religious instinct or sentiment, they all unite in taking 
its existence for granted. Advancing science, clearing 
away in its progress the veils which hung over our 
conceptions of fundamental states, seemed to bring us 
nearer to an understanding of them. Ethnology 
and anthropology, in recent investigations, appeared 
to confirm this assumption. Historians of religion, 
taking up the work at the point where the anthro- 
pologist lets it drop, also appear to add confirmation, 
even from antagonistic camps. Psychology, recently 
stepping forward with its first pretensions to be an 
exact science, does not appear to differ in most of 
its conclusions from the conclusions of the anthro- 
pologist or of the historian. 

The means used by the anthropologist are exact 
and complete; their foundation is the firm and rigid 
basis of physical law. The means used by the historian 
have limits more flexible — yet, if he disregards, as he 
seems to-day bound to do, the regions of myth and 
legend, his foundations are equally solid and in- 
controvertible. To the anthropologist, the presence 



394 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of a so-called religious instinct is a sufficient answer 
to a certain question, and a sufficient explanation of 
a certain stage in the intellectual evolution of Man. 
Without it, his chain lacks its strongest links of connec- 
tion. The historian, in his turn, beholds people 
moving in masses over the face of the globe, construct- 
ing, destroying, building, warring, at the touch of 
huge forces, among which religious sentiment is ever 
one of the most vital. 

But modern psychology has had to rely for its in- 
vestigations upon the questionnaire; and it may be 
permitted us to doubt if this means can ever be suc- 
cessfully used to obtain the more stable materials of 
science. Reasons have already been cited in these 
pages for considering the questionnaire as a method 
fundamentally unsound; and thus for our disagree- 
ment, in toto, with any results obtained by its use. 
William James, evidently feeling this, tried to widen 
the field of evidence ; but the physical difficulties in his 
way — and they are undeniable — threw him back upon 
it at the last, with the result of minimizing the effect 
of his otherwise striking volume. In his hand and in 
that of his followers, the questionnaire appeared to 
fall into confirmation with theories assuming a priori 
the existence of a primal religious instinct. Does 
the spontaneous religious confession — a document ow- 
ing its very existence to the influences making for 
sincerity — does it confirm the results of the question- 
naire ? 

This task must be ours, and the student will surely 
not be impatient with such discussions as are neces- 
sary fully to accomplish that object. 



IX 

THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 



I. The Document as literature; subjectivity; the Book 

of Job. 
II. Growth of religious sentiment. 

III. General comparisons between savage and modern 

mystical phenomena. 

IV. Fasting; intoxication; wandering of the soul ; ecstasy; 

memory and vision; heaven and hell. 
V. Sanctity; spirit-world; faery and angel visions; 

exorcism. 
VI. Vows and covenants. 

VII. The saints ; the voice ; size of the soul ; the dsemon. 
VIII. Magic; stigmata; mystical flight; fetich and fetich- 
worship. 



IX 

THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 

The fundamental difference between the spontane- 
ous confession and the confession drawn from the 
answers to a questionnaire, lies in the fact that the 
former is a literary production amenable to the influ- 
ences controlling literary movements, and so indicat- 
ing the general conditions existing at the time of its 
composition, as well as the particular conditions ob- 
taining in the mind of its author. Being the result of 
a direct impulse to express the more important of 
one's ideas and feelings, these ideas and feelings tend 
to maintain a natural relation the one to the other; 
while the "autobiographical intention " operates to 
preserve sincerity and to keep a proper proportion 
between the various parts of the narrative. Thus 
the very spontaneity of the record lends it value. 

If the document be literary, it is manifest that 
the broader tendencies of literature must not be over- 
looked. The opening chapters of this book endeavored 
to trace these underlying tendencies as they affected 
the minds from which such records took their rise. 
The rite of public confession has been examined in this 
connection, while the formal discipline effected by the 
body of Christian apologetics was not without impor- 
tance. To the generally subjective and introspective 
trend of the world 's slowly maturing thought, full con- 

397 



398 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

sideration was accorded before the contents of the 
documents in question and the evidence they contained, 
claimed the reader's attention. If a return upon the 
broad influences for the moment appears necessary, it 
is because whatever affects the form and genesis of a 
document, obviously shapes the matter thereof ; and no 
discussion of evidence is useful without comprehension 
of its origin. To understand the origin, to gauge 
the validity, of this evidence, to determine its bear- 
ing upon the problem before us, — let us recall at what 
stage in the history of thought the confessant made his 
entry into literature, as the foremost exponent of the 
subjective movement, and of what is now termed the 
personal note. 

In a former volume, the writer * touched on the his- 
torical beginnings of individualism, as affecting the 
production of all types of autobiographical writing. 
In the religious confession this individualism took its 
first and simplest form. So soon as what we call 
authorship became possible, and a man was able pub- 
licly to claim his own compositions, then at once he 
desired a further personal expression and affirma- 
tion. Religious feeling went hand-in-hand with liter- 
ary feeling to seek this affirmation. Both had risen 
from a crowd-sentiment, were made possible by the 
existence of a crowd-sentiment. "It is surely suscep- 
tible of proof/ ' says a recent writer, 2 "that institu- 
tional religion came before personal piety, and that 
the great emotional and consolatory utterances which 
spring from individual experiences could not be made 
until the community, in choral and ritual, formed its 
dialect of worship and supplication and praise. " This 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 399 

dialect, then, shaped our present religious concep- 
tions; and one may mark the individual rising first 
above his group as he came to seek some definition of 
the unknown forces about him in the universe. 

If no pretence can be made at setting a date for 
this event, — one of the vital crises in the history of 
thought, — yet the archives of literature show us where 
the personal note was first sounded, long ere the 
Christian era. 3 The ancient poetical drama of Job re- 
lates a type of experience familiar to-day and startling 
in its vividness. The manner of Job 's complaint and 
the degree of introspection with which it was accom- 
panied, show an individuality already marked, an Ego 
already emphasized. The single voice is here uplifted 
above the chorus, giving words to its personal sense 
of protest and revolt. 

"Surely, I would speak to the Almighty and I 
desire to reason with God, ' ' 4 is the demand, and it 
denotes a mental state eras beyond the communal 
stage. In the words, "Make me to know my trans- 
gression and my sin," lies full appreciation of what 
the Friends call "bearing testimony," linked with 
great wonder at the miracle of Self, a new and in- 
tolerable sensation. 

"If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall con- 
demn me ; if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me 
perverse. Though I were perfect, yet would I not 
know my soul : I would despise my life, " 5 he cries, 
in a sort of exasperation; while his humility and his 
submission both partake of this same bewilderment. 
"Therefore have I uttered that I understood not, 
things too wonderful for me, which I knew not." 6 



400 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

This expressed wonder at life and at self, is the 
wonder of a time when natural laws were in no sense 
understood, when man was still amazed that cold 
was cold, or that hot was hot, or that he should feel 
and act as he felt and acted. 7 The first religious 
phenomena observed by him were necessarily isolated, 
nor would he be apt to relate them to any other set of 
phenomena. Comte notes, in this connection, that the 
mind "must have attained to a refined state of medi- 
tation before it could be astonished at its own acts — 
reflecting upon itself a speculative activity which 
must be at first incited by the external world. ' ' 8 

Job's perplexity comes to us from the cloudland 
at the beginning of things, and marks an advance in 
intellectual growth. There had been dim centuries 
when the savage progressed no further than to marvel, 
vaguely, at the world around him, and to deify 
what he felt to be beyond his grasp. But for a 
strange law of intellectual curiosity, which ordains 
that no human creature shall rest content with mere 
wonder, he might yet have remained ignorant and 
marvelling. Man, however, when once he starts to 
investigate, is deterred by no peril, even of death. 
Like the child in Maeterlinck's fairy-tale, he must 
needs open every door in the palace of night ; 9 for 
this curiosity is incessantly fed by those forces of 
Faith and of Will, which drive him to the task. 

Wholly untrained, at the outset he saw little; he 
possessed scanty powers of observation and none of 
self-observation; unable to comprehend, he could 
neither relate nor compare what he actually saw. 
These faculties developed slowly, and certainly did 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 401 

not keep pace with memory. Hence the lack of 
method in early self -study, the omission, the vagueness, 
the misinterpretation. Hence the sterile self -observa- 
tion of the Neo-Platonists, for instance, leading only to 
the fresh wonder of mysticism. 

The present study finds an especial significance in 
the Book of Job, that landmark in the history of re- 
ligion. Here the individual makes his first appear- 
ance, lifts his voice to protest the weight of his own 
experience. Here the reader may see wonder become 
curiosity, and curiosity become investigation. Here 
he may observe reaction, pressure of the outside world, 
timid friends with their accusation (since grown 
classic) of intellectual arrogance; and finally capitu- 
lation, with honor, to the Terror of the Unknown. It 
is true that Job is an isolated instance, just as Au- 
gustin is an isolated instance. Yet any piece of 
literature becomes necessarily a focus of tentative 
ideas. The self -study in Job indicates the stage that 
was reached at the time of its composition, even if 
his conclusion does not differ from the submissive 
adoration which was murmured all around him. "I 
have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now 
mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself and 
repent in dust and ashes." 10 Nothing novel in this 
conclusion, for the tortured soul of the twentieth cen- 
tury ! ' ' There is only one thing for me now, ' ' writes 
Oscar Wilde, ' ' absolute humility. ' ' 1X 

Thus the final conclusion of the confession is the 
same after two thousand years ; emotionally, at least, 
it has not changed through all the shifting of opinions 
and circumstances. But (as has been already sug- 



402 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

gested) emotional influences are by no means the 
only influences at work upon the evolution of the re- 
ligious idea. Intellectual currents may flow with, or 
against, the emotional currents, affecting the move- 
ment of the whole stream. Self-understanding, in 
itself, must have tended to heighten the forces pro- 
ductive of the mental condition called, by us Belief. 
Bagehot points out that "What we term Belief holds 
both an emotional and an intellectual element, Assent 
and Conviction. . . . The power of an idea to cause 
conviction depends much on its clearness and intensity 
first of all. . . . Truth has nothing to do with it, since 
men may hold it on opposite sides of the same ques- 
tion. . . . The interestingness of the idea counts, but 
it loses its power to convict in proportion as it may 
lose any of its clearness or its intensity. ' ' 12 

Bearing these words in mind, the evolution of be- 
lief-processes in the intelligence of primitive and semi- 
savage man, becomes comprehensible. To him most 
ideas were clear, most were intense, all must have 
been interesting. His beliefs were based on the simple 
operation of natural cause and effect — that rain came 
from the clouds, that it chilled the body and was dried 
by the sunshine ; that to go without food permitted a 
man to see the faces and hear the voices of his 
gods. Convictions of this nature, derived from means 
purely logical, grew intensely strong, and in time this 
strong feeling lent itself to convictions whose founda- 
tions were decidedly less logical. Habits of convic- 
tion, induced by observation of natural laws, developed 
a receptive state of mind, — and one which tended to 
grow receptive without discrimination as to matters 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 403 

lying properly outside the sphere of natural law. This 
intensity of conviction was readily applied to ideas, to 
imaginative and anthropomorphic conceptions, to the 
causes which men were obliged to invent as well as to 
those of which they knew. In such manner there was 
developed the same habit of taking natural logic for 
granted, and acting on it, as may be seen to-day in 
many intelligent children, whose action thereupon will 
so often have disastrous results. For primitive man 
there existed no corrective civilization, to tell him that 
he must not believe everything he thought he saw. 
Not only did he so believe, but he began also to com- 
municate this powerful conviction to all those new 
images which the fascinating process of self-observa- 
tion caused him to behold, rising like delicate and 
evanescent bubbles from the depths to the surface of 
consciousness. Among these, no doubt the larger 
number dealt with the supernatural, and took anthro- 
pomorphic shapes. The further operation of this prim- 
itive logic was responsible in great measure for the 
fetich and fetich-worship, whereby life and vital in- 
fluence were attributed to inanimate objects and sym- 
bols. Gradually, the ritual of ancient religions grew 
up to satisfy primitive man's sense of what was fitting 
and reasonable in the way of rite and sacrifice. 

Psychologically, at least, we can understand to-day 
exactly how the religion of rites and sacrifices was the 
natural outcome of primitive logic, the natural and 
fitting expression of this rudimentary sense for cause 
and effect. Introspection, or self-observation, bore 
its share in the evolution of ritual, because every- 
thing one noticed about oneself tended at first to 



404 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

make one's religious ideas more definitely anthropo- 
morphic. No less is it true, however, that continued 
self-observation inevitably leads the observer away 
from the religion of act and deed alone, — it tends 
rather toward philosophy and toward mysticism. The 
elementary introspection, which at first may have en- 
couraged the formal rite, soon began to alter and to 
develop men's standards of personal conduct. He 
who looked steadfastly within, soon found that for him 
it was not enough to offer sacrifice, to keep feast and 
fast, to join in ritual and choral dance, — what he felt 
within himself was not a whit assuaged by these. His 
discontent is poignantly and beautifully expressed by 
Christ, in passages hungrily seized on by the waiting 
world. 

"For I say unto you, that except your righteous- 
ness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and 
Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom 
of heaven." 13 And again, "Woe unto you, Scribes 
and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint 
and anise and cummin and have omitted the weightier 
matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith. ' ' 14 

The deepening sense that there were "weightier 
matters" heightened the emotional need of matur- 
ing humanity; while the ancient dissociation be- 
tween religion and conduct — a dissociation, as we 
shall see later, having a real foundation in hu- 
man psychology — made the ancient cults and prac- 
tices comparatively useless to aid that man who had 
begun to "look within" and to be ashamed at what 
he saw. The world's desire was now for something 
more significant than the mere performance of the 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 405 

proper act in the proper way. Just before the Chris- 
tian era this need was crucial, for men's ideas and 
ideals had outgrown the standards set by the early 
religions of cult. These creeds had long ceased to 
satisfy the learned or the cultured, for to such minds 
philosophy itself will often furnish both the material 
and the motive-power of religion. Therefore, the im- 
portant point is, not that Socrates, or Seneca, or 
Marcus Aurelius, had outgrown their country's faith, 
but that the people as a whole had outgrown it. The 
poor, the untaught, the despised, also were beginning 
to "look within," in the vague hope that there they 
might behold something more divine than those gross 
gods who reared their misshapen heads into the East- 
ern sunshine. And they did find something more 
divine; pity, and charity, the desire to help one an- 
other and to pardon one another ; movements, exquisite 
and struggling within them, of a something they had 
ignored and which now they came to call the Soul. 

Self -study will be found to lie at the very root of 
the causes making for the swift spread of Christianity. 
Historians have failed to dwell upon the influence of 
the subjective tendency on Christian origins, probably 
because it is hardly capable of proof. It must be felt 
as an atmosphere, rather than beheld as a con- 
dition. An earlier chapter noted this trend in the 
last stand made by paganism, and showed how 
in the later Alexandrian school, during the second to 
the fourth century, subjectivity will be found at the 
bottom of Neo-Platonic and other non-Christian doc- 
trines. Plotinus, Porphyry, and later, Iamblichus, 
made constant use of introspection to express their 



406 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

philosophical-mystical system, if without permanent 
effect. 

The success of Christianity has been variously at- 
tributed, but historians are at least united in the 
opinion that pagan doctrines had ceased to satisfy the 
world. In pre-Christian days, the masses followed 
perfunctorily decaying superstitions sprung from 
their earlier beliefs. 15 Scholars emphasize the prevail- 
ing aridity of these beliefs, the moral unrest which 
caused men to seize with enthusiasm upon a fresh, 
vital, and subjective faith. In its simpler form, 
Christianity appealed directly to the emotions, to the 
newly aroused ethical sense of humbler folk, and of 
those who wondered at the changes taking place within 
themselves. 

Here is no place to linger on the fact of those philo- 
sophic alterations in structure which were later to 
adapt Christian doctrines to the requirements of the 
more sophisticated intellects of the age. It is now 
generally accepted that Paul is responsible for them, 
as for their promulgation. Such changes, however, 
were founded upon an emotional condition; and this 
fact our present data show to be as true of each in- 
dividual case to-day, as it was during the first and 
second centuries. 

Boissier, 16 discussing this subject, remarks that 
every intellectual advance is followed by an emo- 
tional reaction. For the Romans, the death of their 
barbarous polytheism was a great advance, but it left 
them without any emotional faith; hence a natural 
relapse into mysticism. Isis and Mithras, and many 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 407 

other Eastern gods, had their votaries, and their little 
day of fashionable success in Imperial Rome. 17 But 
neither Isis nor Mithras could satisfy, as Christ sat- 
isfied, the need of the people for higher standards of 
conduct. It was the combination he offered of mys- 
tical rewards and satisfactions, together with an avail- 
able working plan of human brotherhood, and hu- 
man interest, which, charged with emotional beauty 
and intensity, moved the entire world. Nor must it 
be supposed that the first Christian doctrines were 
necessarily above the heads of the crowd to whom 
they were addressed. Renan comments on the fact 
that, side by side with barren cults, human no- 
bility was everywhere manifest, that moral ideas 
were everywhere in a state of activity and ferment, 
and that it was the change in the moral standards of 
the peasant which helped to kill the ancient polythe- 
ism. 18 

The vitality of paganism must not be under- 
estimated; its struggle to exist has been the theme 
of many an historian. 19 The change was an internal 
change; not the doctrine so much as the person was 
unfit. Pagan objectivity no longer seemed religious 
to a man beginning to study himself ; and this shift in 
idea may be observed in numberless ways. The con- 
test between Paul and James, called the brother of 
Christ, over the significance of the rite of circum- 
cision, displays the old and the new forces simul- 
taneously contending in the midst of the first small 
group of Christians. To James 's mind the rite is still 
preeminent — the uncircumcised cannot be received 



408 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

into the Church. To Paul's mind, — though he will 
not have his disciples forget their Jewish heritage, 20 
— faith is still, and ever will be, above the law. 

1 l foolish Galatians, ' ' he cries in one of his greatest 
letters, 21 "received ye the Spirit by the works of the 
law, or by the hearing of faith?" And he reiterates, 
throughout the epistle, that those who are once freed 
by the spirit, shall not again fall into bondage through 
observance. If the reactionary wishes of the elder 
Apostle had prevailed in this contest, the spread of 
Christ's teaching must have been much retarded. 
Humanity, arrived at a new stage of individualism, 
had found therein a creed in which themselves, their 
needs and aspirations, partook of greater importance 
since they held they were in truth the children of 
God. 

Subjectivity of thought, which both affected and 
was affected by the growth of Christian tenets, was not 
long in finding expression through literature. A liter- 
ary form became, as it were, technically suggested and 
supplied by the Church ; the ancient rite of public con- 
fession, yielding to the individualistic tendencies of 
the times, gave way to private confession. The 
classic apologists, exercising every mental and emo- 
tional faculty in controversy and exegesis, further in- 
fluenced this form by the heat of their personal con- 
victions. To describe, to differentiate what we be- 
lieve, by making an appeal, first, to the doctrine itself, 
second, to authority, third, to individual experience, 
is a process perfectly familiar to most of us, both 
in its inception and in its order. The child and the 
savage follow, almost mechanically, this same order 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 409 

in their reasoning : "I believe this — first, because it is 
good to believe, beautiful and satisfying; — second, 
because my parents, and the doctors of my tribe so 
teach me, — third, because it makes me feel such and 
such emotions, or because I see and hear such and such 
visions and voices.' ' 

The "Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum" had 
threshed most vigorously the grain of belief from 
the surrounding straw, and thus prepared the way for 
that great exemplar of the third stage — Augustin — to 
make his supreme personal appeal. His " Confes- 
sions'' fused these elements into one flawless and 
incomparable crystal for all time. With the achieve- 
ment of a single masterpiece, any literary form be- 
comes literature. Through Augustin, the confession 
takes it proper place, assuming familiar shapes, point- 
ing to classical examples, and sheltering diverse types 
and schools. Thereafter, the matter changes little ; the 
method, with practice, and under the tutelage of sci- 
ence, has grown more balanced and detailed. The 
self -student is to-day more apt; he understands bet- 
ter what he sees; more important still, he misinter- 
prets his observations rather less. On the other hand, 
he is much further from the sources of that pure emo- 
tion, his guiding vision has dimmed. If Christian- 
ity were an emotional reaction, then it would seem as 
though the first impetus of that emotion, as emotion, 
were spent. With the possibility or desirability of 
its recrudescence, we have not here to do, — since our 
present concern is but to determine some of the 
problems contained in the evidence it furnishes. 

To deal at any length with the different aspects of 



410 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

religious origins, would be to lead the reader far 
from the theme of the present study. Volumes are 
required to discuss any one of the many complex 
and disputed questions involved in the study of re- 
ligion. Save where they touch the subject in hand, 
for us they but becloud the issue. We must not step 
aside from the narrow path whereon our feet are set, 
to lose our way in that vast wilderness of theory. The 
reader must not look for more than a brief mention 
of such "august things,' ' and that only where they 
press upon the confines of this essay. 

Following hard on the history of these documents, 
should be an effort to relate the manifestations of in- 
dividual, personal sentiment which they contain, to 
the mass-sentiment, and when this is accomplished, it 
may perchance be somewhat easier to consider their 
evidence in the light of a general theory of religion. 

The impulse from which these confessions spring is 
individual, spontaneous, and inevitable, and made its 
appearance at a comparatively late stage in the his- 
tory of human ideas. Slowly this idea had grown out 
of the abysmal fear and the propitiation of what was 
feared, into a concomitant state of ritual and hier- 
archy, bound up with the formation of a national 
existence. As the tribe became a nation, as the scat- 
tered nomad elements fused and cohered until they 
built and fought as one, religion was, of course, among 
the most powerful of the formative influences at work 
upon them. Yet it is needful to repeat — because it is 
so often forgotten — that this religious sentiment, with 
its patriotic connotations, is by no means identical with 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 411 

what we now call religious sentiment. Much more has 
it the significance of a convention; and it bound men 
together by the chain of traditional convention. Says 
a recent writer : 22 il With the Romans religion was not 
a personal matter . . . because the very concept of 
personality was in its infancy. There was no indi- 
vidual initiative or volition. . . . The fulfilment of his 
duty to his gods was a normal and natural function of 
his life. ... If one had spoken to a Roman in the 
fourth century, or even in the third century before 
Christ, concerning the soul, its sinfulness, and its need 
of salvation . . . the person addressed would not have 
understood what it was all about." 23 The Roman, in 
Professor Carter's phrase, "had not the consciousness 
of an individual soul." One has only to stop and 
consider what part this conception of the individual 
soul plays in religious ideas to-day, to realize the 
difference in this so-called religious sentiment. If 
it can be compared to anything in modern life, it 
would not be religion at all, but rather our modern 
code of manners or our modern standards of civilized 
behavior. Infringement of its decrees bore the stigma 
of eccentricity along with that of impiety. A man of 
a certain class to-day might readily break the Ten 
Commandments, when there is no temptation strong 
enough to make him wear informal dress on a formal 
occasion. It were far easier for such an one to out- 
rage the moral code than the conventional, to commit 
a sin rather than an act which he would consider as 
unfitting, or as not customary. Similar feeling is rep- 
resented in the Chinese religion; which has been de- 
scribed as a "set of acts properly and exactly done; 



412 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

the proper person sacrificing always to the proper ob- 
ject in the proper way. ' ' 24 

Religious feeling to-day is bound up with the con- 
sciousness of an individual soul. Its source is the 
fresh emotional power roused by Christianity, and 
applied to a whole group of emotions which were 
primarily concerned with a very different set of ideas. 
All those feelings which to-day are wrapt up in mys- 
tical conceptions, in the more ancient, abysmal times, 
were connected with the idea of magic, and fear of the 
unknown. If expressed in any definite form at all, 
these experiences and feelings which we consider as 
purely individual, were then communal, or, if single, 
then the person holding them bore to the rest of his 
tribe the relation of priest, or medicine-man. That 
this identical attitude lingered over into the Middle 
Ages, is to be read in diverse manners; it will 
be found permeating the witch-trials, 25 the trials be- 
fore the Inquisition, the private letters and journals 
of saints and savants. 

The creed of convention — under many forms — suf- 
ficed the world until a period relatively late in history. 
With the decline in its power came the rise in individ- 
ualism, and the demand for a fresh inspiration. No 
longer satisfied in the performance of the proper act 
in the proper manner, men received from advancing 
civilization a stimulus in ideals. A higher sense 
of personal responsibility, born of a deeper self-knowl- 
edge, both demanded and aroused a more intimate 
religious sentiment, and thus religion began to be as- 
sociated with conduct. Scholars have suggested that 
the stages in the development of religion follow hard 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 413 

upon the stages in the evolution of human society, 
passing from the savage or material state to a national 
or tribe-sentiment, and thence, with the rise of the 
individual, differentiating into many heterogeneous 
forms. From the national sentiment is formed a 
priesthood to aid the preservation of the national life. 
This stage is clearly marked in the Pentateuch, where 
religion and patriotism seem one. But a priesthood 
may mean tyranny, and tyranny breeds revolt. In- 
dividual protest not only weakened the power of the 
hierarchy, but came to form a new conception of re- 
ligion, as a personal affair; and as religion grows 
personal and mystical, it tends away from ritual and 
cult. This cycle may be seen in India. Out of the 
early tenets of the Vedic faith was evolved an elaborate 
ritual and a vast and complex hierarchy. This, in 
turn, gave way before the rise of mystic and ascetic 
practices, which, by their excessive individualism, led 
to the rejection of almost all rites, and in some cases 
even to the rejection of the gods themselves. 26 

With the mystical stage, religious self -study is in- 
timately connected. Starting from a mystical im- 
pulse, intensified and heightened in all mystical re- 
actions, it may be influenced to a marked extent by 
scientific knowledge and method, yet its source is 
ever that same spring of emotion from which mysti- 
cism also takes its rise. Oddly enough, scholars have 
practically ignored the inter-relation of mysticism and 
introspection, an inter-relation which, in certain ways, 
is peculiarly significant. For the data of the intro- 
spective record are largely mystical data, the states it 
depicts are largely mystical states. 27 Moreover, the 



414 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

confession shows a suggestive sympathy for these 
states, an inclination to describe them; while, at the 
same time, it manifests a significant tendency to iso- 
late them from the other operations of the mind, as 
sprung from wholly different causes. When these 
conditions are weighed and measured, one is roused to 
consider what real reason exists, after all, to put these 
depicted states in the same class with the opinions con- 
cerning God, revelation, and duty, which are quietly 
and intelligently formed by the sensible, unemotional 
person. Is he really justified in supposing that the 
one is an intensification of the other ? Have this emo- 
tional state and this intellectual state necessarily a 
common source? They have always been classed to- 
gether, because they concern the same subject. We 
use the word "religion" to cover both. Yet the forces 
combining in human psychology are infinitely com- 
plex and intricate, and tend to differentiate more 
widely, the nearer we regard them. All the world has 
been struck by the bizarre contrast in manifestations, 
which, it was taught, came from one and the same 
instinct. Psychologists attribute these variations to 
temperament, — yet some among them are by no 
means convinced that the high seriousness of a Eenan 
or a Spencer, the dogmatic formalism of a Newman, 
the naif anthropomorphism of Meehtilde or Ger- 
trude, the energy of Wesley, the passivity of Mme. 
Guy on, the joyous exaltation of Suso or Rolle, the 
dread and horror of Linsley or Whitefield, are all ex- 
hibitions of the same force. 

The above examples are selected from within the 
confines of Christianity: when one attempts a selec- 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 415 

tion from the world at large, the variations appear 
even more extraordinary. It is to this religious in- 
stinct we have been told to look for an explanation 
alike of the Buddhist's tenderness to life, and of the 
Thug's indifference to murder; of the war-lust of the 
Mohammedan, and of Christ's "Thou shalt not kill." 

To the reflective mind these paradoxes constitute, 
in Hume's phrase, "a complete enigma"; and one 
which is not solved by any study of the individual and 
his variations. Indeed, we see much to make us 
echo the words of Sir Thomas Browne, that "Men have 
lost their reason in nothing so much as their reli- 
gion." 28 Paradoxes in human nature, however, are 
only the result of our inadequacy in trying to ex- 
plain what is not yet fully understood. Hume felt 
this paradox to be an insuperable barrier to the mind. 
"No theological absurdities so glaring," he writes, 
1 ' that they have not sometimes been embraced by men 
of the greatest and most cultivated understanding. 
No religious precepts so rigorous that they have not 
been adopted by the most voluptuous and abandoned 
of men." 29 Bewilderment is the outcome of any at- 
tempt to reconcile these contrasts, and few of us are 
able to follow Hume's advice and to make our escape 
into the calmer regions of philosophy. 

So long as we insist on regarding the so-called reli- 
gious instinct as an unit, — these fundamental problems 
show no signs of solution. Yet the moment one ceases 
so to regard them, a fresh group of problems arises out 
of the debris. Philosophers have been extremely re- 
luctant to decide upon a further differentiation. No 
longer is Comte permitted his solution of the three 



416 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

stages of humanity, "the theological, or fictitious, the 
metaphysical or transitional, and the positive, or scien- 
tific/ ' by which, he declared, each one of us became 
"a theologian in childhood, a metaphysician in youth, 
and a natural philosopher in his manhood. ' ' 30 Comte 
laid more stress on the value of the first, or theological 
conceptions, since he considered that they afforded a 
means of escape from the vicious circle of primitive 
philosophy. His utilitarian point of view was con- 
firmed by the apparent suitability of these conceptions 
to human development, and the stimulus to irksome 
labor offered by a system of rewards and punish- 
ments. 31 There is yet another explanation offered us 
by theorists who place intellectual curiosity at the 
root of religious instinct, thus emphasizing the in- 
tellectual character of its origin. It is epitomized 
simply, "as something that promised to explain the 
world to Man, and to explain him to himself. ' ' 32 

Another group seeks the source of all these feelings 
in worship, in adoration of the powers of nature and 
the heavenly powers ; 33 again suggesting an emotional 
origin. The difficulty of reconciling the phenomena 
is, of course, no new difficulty, and so acute a modern 
as M. Reinach warns against confounding such totally 
different conceptions as religion and religious senti- 
ment, as he distinguishes them. 34 The first is de- 
fined as formal religion springing from that mass of 
primitive scruples regarding totems and tabus. The 
second, or religious sentiment, is rather man 's attitude 
toward the unknown supernatural forces in the uni- 
verse. 35 Seeing in all religions "the infinitely curious 
products of man's imagination and man's reason in 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 417 

its infancy,'' Reinach concludes by looking toward 
ethnological and anthropological research to account 
for them. 

By accepting the truth that the sources of the re- 
ligious instinct are not one, but many, that he who 
displays emotional manifestations of its activity has 
no necessary kinship with another in whom such man- 
ifestations are intellectual, much will have been 
gained. Our spontaneous— one had almost said 
classic — intolerance with each other's beliefs, may 
be better understood. Risen out of a deep-seated and 
innate perception that religious feelings have not al- 
ways an identical psychological source, this impa- 
tience may at times indicate that these sources are 
positively antagonistic. For, if we examine the his- 
tory of our mental growth, we cannot fail to note that 
the rate at which our various faculties evolve is not 
necessarily equal, any more than their material is 
necessarily homogeneous. The complexity of our 
personal evolution is the raison d'etre of our so-called 
inconsistency. A man 's intellect may have reached to 
a high degree of evolution, while his emotional equip- 
ment yet lags centuries behind. One faculty may 
be forced in its unfolding, while another may be 
stunted, or warped, or atrophied. Thus men of com- 
manding intelligence have acted, at crises, like sav- 
ages ; and men of the roughest stamp have displayed 
the most sensitive perceptions. The dual, or multiple, 
sources of the so-called religious instinct, slowly 
developing in the individual into faculties both 
various and opposing, cause the personal phenomena 
with which he is at moments confronted, and which 



418 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

at no time has he been able to understand. The very 
fact that he cannot understand them, lends them 
potency and dignity, and this potency and dignity 
cling around the whole subject from early times. The 
modern student is affected by this atmosphere, which 
appears to him to furnish warrant for the mystical 
point of view. 

When we look more nearly at the course of human 
ideas, we see that this fallacy of the single religious 
instinct lies at the root of many important misunder- 
standings. Emotional experiences of any sort are 
seldom satisfactorily accounted for to the intellect; 
although religion has made the effort to control 
and systematize them by the formulation of dog- 
ma. The history of sect lies in the result of this 
effort. At moments (and crucial moments) it has 
been successful to a high degree, but it is a success not 
to be sustained, since the vitality of any dogma in- 
evitably sets in motion the forces tending toward 
its own destruction. 

Many volumes cannot suffice to deal adequately with 
these complexities; at present our interest must re- 
main with the emotional factors. Hume commented 
on man 's anthropomorphic tendency in such matters ; 
but it is only since Hume's day that any detailed study 
of this tendency has been made possible. 36 Investiga- 
tion into the life, customs, folk-lore, and psychology 
of savage peoples, by means of the new sciences of 
ethnology and anthropology, has provided us with a 
better means of understanding our past selves. It has 
shown that if evolution has carried us beyond the folk 
of the jungle and the wild, our heritage yet remains 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 419 

the same as theirs. We are taught to realize not only 
that what savages are, we ourselves have been, but 
also that under certain influences we may even become 
as savages again. Myth, legend, fairy-lore, may all 
have importance when pressed into the service of the 
anthropologist. His theories have so far been broadly 
general, but every day adds to the material at his dis- 
posal, and by means of this material his work will be 
found to cast much light upon our present problems. 
The special relation of anthropological and ethnologi- 
cal material, to the material of this study, forms the 
final and not the least important section of our task. 

We have endeavored to give the student a proper 
preparation in order that he may grasp the full 
significance of ethnological comparison. Having fol- 
lowed the development of the religious self -study 
in literature, together with the main psychological 
influences controlling it and its data, we are better 
able to observe the important parallels and to draw the 
requisite conclusions. We look abroad upon the gen- 
eral scientific achievements in this field, and connect 
those minor fluctuations on which his gaze has been 
concentrated with the large movements of univer- 
sal law. 

During the last half-century, the ethnologist has 
provided us with a new means of accomplishing this 
end. In his treatise — now become classic — on "Primi- 
tive Culture," Dr. Tylor demonstrates the remain- 
ing links between the remote and the visible past. 
Custom and folk-lore, which are examined by him with 
a masterly fulness, are shown to retain these links 



420 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

when any individual development may have broken 
them. Through this mass of material his own theories 
on the subject of animism take shape in a manner 
deeply convincing. Tylor, of course, does not attempt 
to carry them into the ages where they might be con- 
firmed from one's own reading or experience. Later 
investigation, however, may lead us to this confirma- 
tion, by causing us to mark the effect of the data 
furnished by the confessant, on the theory of animism. 
Laid side by side, the savage and the civilized ex- 
amples are, indeed, striking, not because they differ 
so much, but because they differ so little. 

Dr. Tylor 37 alludes to "that vast quiet change/ ' 
which has overtaken the educated world • and in sup- 
port of his words points to the disappearance of 
Fetichism, Demonology, Idolatry, from the societies of 
men. No thoughtful person would willingly dissent 
from such authority ; yet the student of the records of 
confessions finds it set at naught upon every other 
page. A new and startling turn is thereby lent to this 
investigation. If the evidence contributed by the 
confessant appears to contradict the statement of a 
"vast quiet change" in the world's history, by what 
means does it do so ? And what is the full import of 
such a contradiction? 

In making any attempt to answer these questions, 
the reader will not have forgotten that the Introduc- 
tion to this work warned him of its inductive 
plan. The chapters devoted to the analysis of the data, 
therefore, must needs provide him with a means of 
reply. When he recalls their contents, one fact will 
remain clear, namely — that among all the mystical phe- 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 421 

nomena which they describe, there is none peculiar 
to Christianity. It will also be shown that there is 
none which may not also be found among men in a 
savage and semi-savage state. 38 

Such an assertion is not made without due appre- 
ciation of what is involved; and thus it is advisable 
to go more into detail than at first sight appears pro- 
portionate. This is the very crux of our theme; 
here are comparisons which must be made under 
the reader's own eye. There may be little new in the 
idea that Christianity, plus civilization, has literally 
brought nothing into man's emotional religious ex- 
perience which he did not possess before, yet one has 
only to lay the savage examples beside the serried 
ranks of confessants, and it will be brought home to 
the mind with an overwhelming freshness and force. 
The essence of emotional religion (which for the object 
of the present enquiry we have just agreed to differ- 
entiate from those processes evolving intellectual be- 
lief), the stuff of this feeling, has not changed since 
man went out from his cave to slay the sabre-toothed 
tiger, and to adore the stars of heaven. Terror and 
adoration filled him then; and to that same terror 
and adoration he now gives alien names. 

It is true, that then he was able to observe cause and 
effect, with that natural, spontaneous logic, which it 
was one of the direct results of Christianity to de- 
stroy, and which he has not yet reconquered. Thus, 
the North American Indian, noting the result wrought 
upon his imagination by fasting, deliberately prac- 
tised it with that end in view. 39 Having observed that 
the gods revealed themselves to him whose hunt was 



422 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

unsuccessful, and whose belt was tightly drawn against 
the pangs of hunger, he required that the education 
of his tribal seer or medicine-man should be founded 
on fasting. 40 This is the statement of Chingwauk, 
the Algonquin chief; and also of Catherine Wabose, 
the Ojibway prophetess. In North Queensland, the 
seer starves himself for three or four days, or until 
he sees a spirit. 41 The priests of the Gold-Coast 
negroes are well aware that an empty stomach pro- 
duces hallucinations. Hence persons who desire to 
consult the gods are enjoined to fast, while, at times, 
drugs also are administered. 42 If the Mussulman of 
Morocco wishes to raise a djinn, he retires for twelve 
days into a desert place to fast, purifying himself by 
bathing, while he burns perfumes and recites incanta- 
tions. After a time, a huge dragon will appear to 
him; and if he is not frightened, it will be followed 
by other visions. 43 In neighboring localities, the proc- 
ess is varied by the neophyte repeating a single 
chapter of the Koran one thousand and one times. 44 
Similar practices are mentioned by Tylor, who adds 
that, as late as the Greeks, the Pythia of Delphi fasted 
to obtain inspiration. 45 King Saul, we read, was 
weak from fasting during his visit to the Witch of 
Endor ; nor are we surprised at the success of her en- 
chantments in raising Samuel's spirit, when it is re- 
membered that Saul had been subject to a very defi- 
nite form of melancholia, with delusions. 46 So early 
as the story of Saul, there is thus a manifest attempt 
to ignore fasting as the cause of vision. By Chris- 
tian times it was ignored altogether, though prac- 
tised yet more frequently. When it is stated that 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 423 

the Bogomils 47 fasted until they beheld the Trinity, 
a modern investigator sees in this observation but 
proof of the doubling or tripling effect of hallu- 
cination, a stage perfectly familiar to an intoxi- 
cated person. The saints and mystics of the Middle 
Ages were equally subject to the effects of fasting, but 
to them it seemed only a means of subduing the flesh, 
of releasing the spirit. Jerome, in his " Letters," re- 
marks that excessive fasting impaired the faculties 
of many saintly hermits ; 48 and this acknowledg- 
ment shows an attitude differing from that he dis- 
played when a greater zeal and heat somewhat modi- 
fied his natural shrewdness. Teresa, watching and 
fasting in her incense-filled chapel, does not attrib- 
ute the ensuing visions to either of these circum- 
stances. Loyola did not connect his abstinence and 
great physical weakness with that apparition "of a 
serpent shining with what looked like eyes, hanging 
in the air beside him," or with the later vision of "a 
triple plectrum." To such as these a fast was simply 
one of the means of preparation for such experi- 
ences, while to think it the cause would be an in- 
finite dishonor to the spirit. 

The influence of Christian doctrines in leading the 
mind away from logical inference, may also be noticed 
when comparing Christian records with savage cus- 
toms concerning the production of visions by the use 
of drugs or wine. Thus, the Winnebago tribes and 
the Celebs of Guyana, 49 were accustomed to undergo 
exciting conditions much resembling the camp-meet- 
ings described by such participants as Peter Cart- 
wright, Billy Bray, Daniel Young, C. G. Finney, and 



424 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

several individuals among the Mormons. Two con- 
versions on our lists were the direct result of intoxica- 
tion ; 50 but, of course, they are not so acknowledged. 
Delirium from fever is responsible for several other 
examples, who were equally bent upon ascribing them 
to a supernatural cause. Various writers upon mys- 
tical compromise dwell enthusiastically on what they 
consider to be the great and essential differences be- 
tween such cases as these and the savage examples; 
but an honest mind finds it impossible altogether to 
ignore the fundamental proposition that things which 
are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. 

"The joy that was unspeakable and glorious" which 
exalted Robert Blair, after the milk-posset; the " ter- 
ror of death" which copious draughts "of a sweet 
liquor called shrub" roused in the lad, John Conran, 
were paralleled without the slightest hesitation by 
the American Indian, by the Parsee, by the Hindu 
priest, who used the same means for the deliberate 
purpose of exciting just such sensations and their ac- 
companying visions. 51 The mediaeval Christian had 
forgotten the practice of inducing religious ecstasy 
by swoon, or convulsion, or fever; which belonged 
originally to savagery. 62 

Those phenomena of ecstasy, to which considera- 
tion has been given in other sections of this book, are 
supplemented by the data of the anthropologist in a 
manner very striking. Particularly do such data 
comment on the belief that ecstasy was "a wandering 
of the other Self, or Soul," which, upon its return to 
the body, could tell of its adventures. 53 The belief 
that the soul could leave the body involved the belief 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 425 

in its separate existence; and, though the develop- 
ment of an individual soul-conseiousness is late in 
human evolution, 54 yet this special form must have 
been influenced, if not fed, by contact with the beliefs 
of peoples still in the savage and primitive state. 

The Australian natives 55 hold that the soul quits 
the body during sleep; while the Arab regards its 
absence as a great danger, never awakening a sleeper 
without an invocation to God to recall the errant 
soul. 58 The Eskimo thinks that his spirit goes a-hunt- 
ing while he lies asleep or in a trance. 57 If the soul 
of the Solomon Islander fails to return by morning, 
the man dies ; but on reaching the mouth of Panoi, or 
Hades, the soul may be " hustled back" by the other 
ghosts and so returned to the sleeper or sick person. 58 
Tylor cited the Dyaks, the Zulu, the Khond, and the 
Turanian, as holding similar beliefs; and takes occa- 
sion to compare them with the later cases of Socrates 
and Jerome Cardan. 59 Noting the popular expres- 
sion of "beside one's self " as "crystallizing this idea 
in language/ ' he adds, "that the mere evolution of 
the idea of the soul from a concrete, substantial image 
of the person (eidolon) to the tenuous, spiritualized 
abstraction used at present, is the result of gradual 
development from the conception of primitive, savage 
animism. ,,6 ° 

That early and deeply rooted conviction that the 
soul could leave its owner, has a vital bearing on the 
present discussion. In all the words and works of the 
mystics its persistence is revealed. Whatever mean- 
ings the theorist has attached to these words and 
works, whatever transcendental web he has tried to 



426 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

spin from them, — when all the threads are carefully 
unwound, this one fact alone will be found lying at 
the heart. The early mystic is impregnated with this 
conviction of the wandering soul ; it underlies his ex- 
perience; it is the real basis of his belief in mysti- 
cism. If we turn to the great passages upon which 
mysticism is founded, what do we find? Richard of 
St. Victor's famous statement is on close analysis, 
seen to be only this, — that he believed his soul could 
be "away." Augustin's reliance is, after all, but 
upon that great **if" the soul might be "away." 
The texts cited by Dante, in the letter to Can Grande, 
serve to show his appreciation of the fact that the soul 
can be "away." "It seems to the ecstatic," writes 
Teresa, "that he is transported to a region wholly dif- 
ferent from that where we find ourselves ordinar- 
ily. ' ' 61 And if we ask them to define, to separate, and 
determine this conviction, what is their response ? One 
and all, without a single important exception, dwell 
on the significant fact that their soul may not 
remember what has happened to it during its ab- 
sence. Paul, even, "heard unspeakable words which 
it is not lawful for a man to utter." 62 Angela da 
Foligno says, "I know not how to speak of it, nor to 
offer any similitude." 63 This failure of memory is 
not capricious and accidental; it is a fundamental 
characteristic of the mystical experience, and taken by 
the subject to be the confirmation of its Divine nature. 
The conclusion is thus forced upon one that the whole 
structure of mediaeval mysticism is erected upon this 
underlying, primitive, and animistic belief, that the 
mystic thus unconsciously repeats and confirms the 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 427 

savage idea. The Eskimo, the Zulu, the Dyak priest, 
does not expect to remember what happened to his 
soul when it went away. But the mystic is naively 
astonished that he should not remember, and im- 
mediately concludes that this is because of the in- 
conceivable splendor of what he beheld in Paradise. 
"For the comprehension of these things,' ' writes 
Dante, "it must be understood that when the human 
intellect is exalted in this life ... it is exalted to 
such a degree that after its return the memory waxeth 
feeble, because it hath transcended human bounds. ' ' 64 
Dante was undoubtedly familiar with Richard of St. 
Victor, whose remark is, "that we cannot by any 
means recall to our memory those things which we 
have erst seen above ourselves/ ' Teresa accounted 
for this fact by observing that in a state of ecstasy, 
God draws the soul to himself, but not the faculties of 
memory and understanding. She further compares 
the ecstatic condition to that of a person half-awake. 
John of the Cross declares that this loss of memory 
during ecstasy is a proof of its Divine character, as 
well as a warning to men to waste no time on the cul- 
tivation of a faculty so little god-like as their useless 
memory. 65 

One hardly expects the savage to reason respect- 
ing his simple, elementary beliefs; but the con- 
spicuous failure of men highly developed, to do so, is 
one of the reminders of the complexity of our evolu- 
tion. To the savage, dreams became confounded with 
memories, and if no dream told him what had be- 
fallen his absent spirit, then he simply did not look 
for any further news of its wanderings. Mediaeval 



428 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Christianity, on the other hand, not satisfied with the 
dream-interpretation, yet by no means rejecting it, 
proceeded to make for itself fresh mystery out of the 
fact of not remembering what had never happened. 
To our irreverent and direct logic of to-day, the ex- 
planation is so simple that one is almost ashamed to 
offer it, as savoring of banality. But to make the 
plain inference that one could not recall what had 
happened to him when asleep, or entranced, only be- 
cause there was really nothing to recall, was an im- 
possibility to the mind of the Middle Ages. 

The mystic easily supplemented his vague and 
cloudy dream-recollections with inventions, the crea- 
tions of a powerful imagination colored by his anthro- 
pomorphic inheritance. From Hildegarde of Bingen 
to Swedenborg and Joseph Smith, the entire group of 
so-called revelations is the literary result of this tend- 
ency. All these seers and visionaries felt that the soul 
was at times "away," and so felt because such a belief 
has its root in the primeval depths of emotional exist- 
ence. Naturally it followed, for them, that since the 
soul can leave the body, it has a separate being, — a 
separate identity. Thus the situation of the mediaeval 
or modern visionary becomes closely linked to that of 
the savage visionary. Gertrude of Eisleben, Teresa, 
Maria d'Agreda, stretched stiff and entranced before 
their awestricken followers, were not there — in the 
rigid body — they were "away." They were travers- 
ing the height of heaven or the depth of hell ; after a 
while they would return, vaguely to hint at what 
they had seen. For many centuries the hints have 
been identical, and when developed subsequently, the 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 429 

details have been similar. 66 This bulk of repeated 
experience formed, gradually but surely, a general im- 
pression, on which in time was built a resultant 
dogma. 

"The experience of man," writes a modern ethnolo- 
gist, "is gained from oft-repeated impressions. It is 
one of the fundamental laws of psychology that the 
repetition of mental processes increases the facility 
with which these processes are performed and de- 
creases the degree of consciousness that accompanies 
them. This law expresses the well-known phenomena 
of habit ... If a stimulus has often produced a cer- 
tain emotion, it will tend to reproduce it every 
time. ' ' 67 No generalization could describe more ac- 
curately the progress of the phenomena of ecstasy and 
trance. Their subjects found these states occurring 
with an ever-increasing facility. Repetition, decreas- 
ing the degree of consciousness by which such phe- 
nomena were accompanied, assisted to induce that 
very disuniting process, which operated upon person- 
ality as the result of a new, disintegrating force. 
Repetition, developing the power of the association 
of ideas, developing the imagination along lines of fear 
and horror, elaborated the first and simpler ideas into 
images incredibly hideous and terrible. The fiend 
became a familiar house-mate to the anchorite ; 68 evil 
came to possess a vitality and animation all its own. 
That "hell- vision," tormenting the confessant in all 
its dreadful imagery of fire and torture, had grown 
far more vivid than ever was the savage idea of an 
Otherworld. It has been remarked that in Celtic 
countries the place after death was one of rest and 



430 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

peace, until Christianized into a heaven and a hell. 69 
The Huron and the Hindu Otherworld was but a 
milder hell, and the legend of descent into it was 
revived by Christian dogmatists. 70 Thus did Chris- 
tianity, in Tylor's phrase, "borrow details from the 
religions it abolished.' ' 71 Thus did the Christian con- 
fessant repeat, with a new accent of intensity, emo- 
tions rooted within him, centuries before the Chris- 
tian era. Thus, from the simple, savage observation 
that the soul apparently left the body in sleep or 
trance, there was evolved that vast, cloudy, and per- 
plexing structure of mediaeval mysticism. 

1 ' To follow the course of animism on from its more 
primitive stages," proceeds Tylor, "is to account for 
much of mediaeval and modern opinion, whose mean- 
ing and reason could hardly be comprehended without 
the aid of a development-theory of culture, taking in 
the various processes of new formation, abolition, sur- 
vival, and revival. ,, 72 Investigation into the data of 
the individual confirms these words, both in general 
outline and in particular detail. Much more than 
opinion will be found to be accounted for by careful 
comparative study. How enlightening to any view 
of the mediaeval mystic it is to read that the Moham- 
medan distinguishes between the saint and the sor- 
cerer, only when the miracles performed by the first 
have a moral aim! In other respects, he considers 
them the same; and certain Islamic doctors even go 
so far as to deny the reality of sorcery, holding it but a 
sort of saintship gone wrong. 73 The sanctity of these 
medicine-men renders them in a measure fatal ; — their 
bodies are held to be full of poison and perilous 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 431 

forces; — "nouvelle preuve," observes the collector of 
these superstitions, "du caractere equivoque des 
choses sacrees. ' ' 7 * 

This likeness between Christian and Mussulman 
holy man, between hermit and marabout, vouches for 
the persistence in human nature of impulses which 
were long antecedent to opinion. There is little need 
to repeat those examples which crowd the pages of 
the anthropologist, carrying this truth into further 
minuteness of detail. Examples are drawn from sav- 
age times of beliefs which remained "in fullest vigour 
through the classic world,' ' and which to-day are in 
full vigor among the natives of the Congo. 75 The 
nymph and dryad of the Greek, or the lares of the 
Roman, would arouse no surprise in the Eskimo, or 
the African negro, who knows that rivers, wells, and 
trees have each their "kra," or indwelling spirit. 76 

The Pythia of Delphi has abandoned her classic 
shrine, but the same god to-day speaks to his votaries 
through the foaming and convulsions of the medicine- 
man in the African jungles, 77 and the poor savage 
is lent a touch of dignity by the mere possibility of 
this comparison. The peasant-belief in a cottage- 
faery, 78 in a Brownie, or a Kobold, seems to be an 
attenuation of the ancient belief in an attendant or 
household-spirit. The patron-saints of Peter Favre, 
of Therese of the Holy Child, or of Carlo da Sezze, 
who watched over them in their daily lives, at once 
become figures more comprehensible, imaginatively 
complete, and ready to receive the decorative treat- 
ment by which the Italian painters gave them a new 
immortality. The child-mind of the world delighted 



432 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

in delicate picturings of these beloved, sacred figures. 
How often do the visions — in their decorative qual- 
ity — remind us of the visions of faery ! Gertrude of 
Eisleben makes note of the Saviour's garland, and his 
gold-embroidered tunic. The blue robe of the Virgin 
is the blue of the sky. To a child, is not a faery- 
vision always crystal-clear and glittering? And the 
Lord appeared to Teresa, white as snow and clear as 
crystal. 79 If only in our imaginations, our child- 
hood yet remains with us. 

Alas, that it remains with us not only in these 
charming ways; for we are often closer to the Gold- 
Coast negro than we should like to think. When the 
director of Mary of the Angels " commanded " he? 
disease to disappear, psychologists tell us that he made 
use of the power of suggestion upon a highly sensitive 
subject. Ethnologists add, that this priest stood in 
the same relation to the suffering mystic as the Zulu 
medicine-man toward his patient, when he exorcized 
the evil spirit believed to cause the disease. 80 The 
rite is derived from those cloudy ages when all ills 
were ascribed to the action on our bodies of an evil 
demon ; 81 nor does the reader need to be reminded 
that exorcism is frequently mentioned both in the Old 
and the New Testaments. Hysteria and epilepsy 
were maladies lending themselves readily to the ex- 
planation of demoniacal possession ; and against these 
attacks exorcism continued to be constantly and pro- 
fessionally practised until late in the seventeenth 
century. Comparative study is here peculiarly sug- 
gestive. Among the Melanesians, a witch-doctor 
will call upon the sufferer by name, and the 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 4,33 

demon, with a strange voice, will answer; — "It is not 
he, it is I ! ' ' 82 So the Pere Surin — unfortunate ' ' man 
of God" — interrogated the possessed Jeanne des 
Anges, and the fiend, replying, named himself, Isa- 
caaron. The miserable nuns of Loudun and Louviers 
are described as undergoing the identical experience 
of the Zulu, the Basuto, and the Patagonian. 

"During the early centuries of Christianity, ' ' com- 
ments Tylor, "demoniacal possession becomes pecul- 
iarly conspicuous . . . because a period of intense 
religious excitement brought it more than usually into 
requisition." 83 To this prevalence and its signifi- 
cance, we shall again return; at the moment we shall 
but emphasize the periodical nature of the possession- 
delusion, and the accompanying rite of exorcism. 

Says a keen student: "Beliefs change, but rites 
persist, as the fossil shell serves to date for us the 
geological epoch. ' ' 84 Lest we be at any time tempted 
to glory in the so-called freedom from these supersti- 
tions, let us further examine the history of this espe- 
cial delusion. 

Lecky observes that "From the time of Justin 
Martyr, for about two centuries, there is not a single 
Christian writer who does not solemnly and explicitly 
assert the reality and frequent employment of this 
power. ' ' 85 It was specifically connected with the 
entire system of miracles, so influential over the 
Christian convert's mind. 86 The letters and trea- 
tises of the Fathers are filled with narratives of the 
casting-out of devils; while a few centuries later, 
Guibert, Othloh, Glaber, Luther, testify to the vivid 
existence of such beliefs. Still later come the Salem 



434 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

and the Scottish witch-trials, through which this gro- 
tesque horror is carried into our own country and al- 
most to our own day. 87 

Nor has our awn day escaped this savage phe- 
nomenon. The history of the Mormon performances 
at Kirtland and in New- York State, is striking when 
the surroundings and native characters are con- 
sidered. "In April, 1830," says the official chronicle, 
"the devil was cast out of Newell Knight, by Joseph 
Smith, Sr. . . . This was the first miracle done in 
this church." 88 Smith's account is detailed, and 
unhesitating. - ' I went, and found him suffering very 
much in his mind, and his body acted upon in 
a very strange manner, his visage and limbs 
distorted and twisted in every shape possible to im- 
agine. ... I succeeded in getting hold of him by the 
hand, when almost immediately he spoke to me, and 
with very great earnestness required of me that I 
should cast the devil out of him. ... I rebuked the 
devil, and commanded him in the name of Jesus 
Christ to depart from him, when immediately Newell 
spoke out and said that he saw the devil leave him 
and vanish from his sight. ' ' On cross-examination as 
to the fiend's appearance, Knight admitted that the 
image was hallucinatory; "a spiritual sight, and spir- 
itually discerned.' ' 89 

Hysterical epidemic soon followed scenes like these. 
Delirium, with outbreaks of "the jerks" and the 
"shakes," ran riot through these communities. The 
point of view of the individual sufferer, under such 
influences, relapsed at once to the savage, or semi- 
savage, level; and in these hard-headed American 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 435 

pioneers, we can find no jot of resemblance to our- 
selves. 90 Writes Elder Kimball in his journal: 
"I . . . could distinctly see the evil spirits, who 
foamed and gnashed their teeth upon us. We gazed 
upon them about an hour and a half." Elder Hyde 
fought a host of demons who nearly choked him to 
death, and describes 91 the conflict in terms which 
would have been wholly comprehensible to Guibert de 
Nogent, or Jeanne des Anges, or poor little Marie de S. 
Sacrement, or Jeanne Fery. 92 In 1844, in Virginia, 
the Mormon elders contended with a crowd of evil 
spirits for the possession of three young girls, alter- 
nately exorcising and re-exorcising these demons, un- 
til becoming exhausted. In another case, the exor- 
cists were themselves attacked, just as Pere Surin had 
been. Similar outbreaks of demoniacal possession and 
the effort to control it by exorcism, are noted in 
Switzerland as late as 1861, 93 and in China even 
later. 94 

When the confessant " makes vows," offers pro- 
pitiatory sacrifice, or concludes a "covenant with God" 
by which his agony and distress are relieved, he but 
blindly follows in the tread of his savage ancestor, who, 
like the Bodo or Congo chieftain, tried to "buy off" 
the hostile spirits. 95 A higher form of this practice 
will be found among the early Romans and Jews. 
Sacrifice was recommended to Job as a means of atone- 
ment for his revolt; but the literature of sacrifice is 
too full to be dealt with in this place. In Rome, 
"A prayer was a vow (votum) in return for cer- 
tain specified services to be rendered. Were they 



436 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

rendered, man was compos voti — bound to perform 
what he had promised. "Were they not rendered, the 
contract was void. Sometimes in a crisis the god was 
bound in advance by a devotio, or sacrifice. The priest 
held the position of legal intermediary. ' ' 96 

The attitude of the Christian confessant toward 
his Saviour is less presuming in its form ; we shall see 
if it actually lacked presumption. One case ' ' directly 
covenanted with God for a return of health." In 
several others, the mere expectation of tranquillity 
to be secured by such a covenant was sufficient to 
secure it; further evidence, if need be, of the power 
of suggestion. Although God is not directly stated 
to be the party of the second part, yet he was con- 
sidered as bound by the contract in question. 97 

Any attempt at comparative study of primitive and 
modern mystical phenomena, and the beliefs derived 
therefrom, will be incomplete without a comparative 
examination of the primitive and the modern sacred 
personality. The change in attitude toward such 
personalities has been fundamental, yet its evolution 
is traceable from the primitive to the mediaeval times. 
Mediaeval opinion — our confessants tell us — regarded 
the hysterical as divine, the idiot as sacred. To-day 
the tendency is exactly opposite; many regard the 
divine as only hysterical, and the saint as a harmless 
sort of idiot. The Middle Ages set aside for saint- 
ship those individuals displaying abnormal mental 
signs; just as the Zulu to-day selects his priest. 98 
Among the Patagonians, epileptics are immediately 
chosen for magicians; while the Siberians destine 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 437 

children prone to convulsions to be brought up in the 
sacred profession." Nor can the mystic claim a 
mental superiority over these cases; whatever their 
disciples may claim for them. The blessed M. M. 
Alacoque could take care of herself in the world much 
less well than any Zulu witch-doctor that we have 
ever read of. A former section has already made 
note of the complacent mental inferiority of such fa- 
mous examples as Mme. Guyon, A. C. Emmerich, Maria 
d'Agreda, Joanna Southcott, Joseph Smith, the Mor- 
mon prophet; while even Teresa, Loyola, and Richard 
of St. Victor, — great intellects all three, — considered 
the ideal state as one much closer to pure idiocy than 
they could ever hope to attain. Their views indicate 
the still-dominant influence of the old belief in the 
sacredness of the fool. 

When one reads of certain early hermits, and later 
Quakers; of Juliana of Norwich, or of Suso, or of 
Angela da Foligno; one knows that the Patagonian 
priest, or the Algerian marabout, would not have 
found them at all surprising or uncongenial. By 
systematically de-rationalizing himself, man produces 
pretty much the same results whatever his country, 
or his previous degree of civilization. 100 Plotinus's 
union with the Divine differs comparatively little, after 
all, from the attempt of Amiel to "possess God." 
t With the savage, the semi-savage, the mediaeval or the 
modern mystic, the abnormal still remains the proof 
of the supernatural, still retains its sacred character. 
This feeling is carried into various minor phenomena 
of the mystical experience. That Voice, — sometimes 
called of God, sometimes of the departed, — the Voice 



438 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

which commanded Fox or Augustin or Swedenborg 
or Smith, speaks the same messages in the ear of the 
Malay, the Algonquin, or the New Zealander; and is 
by him described as "a low mutter, a murmur, or a 
whistle. ' ' 101 Among the Abipones the hissing of little 
ducks which fly at night is taken for the voices of the 
dead. 102 The Maori priest may hear the voice of the 
ghostly visitant, and comprehend its message, though 
to another it seems only the low sound of wind pass- 
ing through trees. 103 Tylor likens this sound in its 
quality to the voices of the dead in Homer, where it 
becomes "a thin murmur or twitter." 104 Shakspere 
wrote that "the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in 
the Roman streets." 105 "The still, small voice" of 
Scripture embodied the experience of the whole listen- 
ing world. 

Personal testimony heightens for the student the 
significant quality and timbre of the Voice. All ears 
have heard, all nations have described it. Mahomet 
asks to be delivered "from the whisperer who slily 
withdraweth. ' ' 106 This has further interest in connec- 
tion with the idea that "the language of demons is also 
a low whistle or a mutter, and that devils generally 
speak low and confusedly." 107 Jerome Cardan heard 
the sound differently at different times ; on one impor- 
tant occasion it came to him muffled, "like one afar off, 
confessing to a priest." 108 To express the idea of 
tenuity or bird-like quality, the Hebrew term is 
"Batkol," or "daughter of a Voice." This well de- 
fines the curious attribute of the sound, that "it mur- 
mured like a dove. ' ' 109 The American Indian felt it 
to resemble a cricket, rather than a bird. 110 Ancient 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 439 

Hebrew writings tell that the holy Elisha ben Abuya 
heard the Voice ' ' chirping • ' behind the temple. Who 
can forget the intensity of the prophet's phrase when 
he says that "thy Voice shall whisper out of the 
dust?" 111 while many examples may be cited from 
the Bible and the Talmud, in support of its peculiar 
and characteristic timbre. Cardan held the old belief 
that this Voice belonged to a personal daemon, and 
mentions it frequently. With him it was wont to 
grow "to a tumult of voices' '; just as among the 
Jews it would become a hum or reverberation. 
"Seek unto them," says the prophet, "that have 
familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and that 
mutter. ' ' 112 The Voice is not always low, though it 
is always shrill; at times it is very loud. To the 
Friend Elizabeth Ashbridge, it came "as from a 
trumpet"; while to Henry Alline, it was "still and 
small, through my whole soul." To Joseph Smith it 
gave a call, from a distance. R. Wilkinson heard "a 
dreadful sound in his ears, which he thought was the 
adversary." Augustin remarks that he "never re- 
membered to have heard anything at all like it." 
Joseph Hoag heard "as plain a whisper as ever I 
heard from a human being. ' ' 113 

There would be interesting speculation for the 
medical-materialist in linking this typical Voice with 
the equally typical noises present in cases of aural 
catarrh. 114 These are reported as "ranging from 
simple, pulsating murmurs to thundering noises, or 
reports like the shot of pistol or cannon. In many 
cases they are of a whistling or singing character. 
. . . They may be constant, intermittent, or recur- 



440 EELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

rent." The writer doubts whether they "ever as- 
sume the form of spoken language"; suggesting that 
"those who seem to hear voices and to receive mes- 
sages and revelations, probably have a central lesion 
of the cortex." 115 The occurrence would seem too 
general and too widespread for this latter explanation 
always to prevail; but, perhaps, the medical means 
of deciding this fact are not sufficient at the present 
time. Cases of cortical lesion would surely present 
certain definite, pathological symptoms; whereas the 
Voice occurs frequently under conditions fairly nor- 
mal, or those but temporarily abnormal. A more 
natural condition would be that ignorant humanity, 
finding no explanation of his head-noises other than 
the anthropomorphic explanation which he was ac- 
customed to attach to most things, took them to mean 
the flattering attention of his god or spirit. Sooner 
or later, this explanation would receive an apparent 
ratification from some comrade in the tribe whose 
cortical lesion led him to amplify and formulate words 
for the Voice. The evolution of the central fact of 
interior whispering, into that Voice which has mur- 
mured or thundered down the ages, might be therefore 
attributable, as so much else in our past, to mere 
"misinterpreted observation." That efforts have 
been made for a true explanation is shown in a com- 
ment made by Burton, in the "Anatomy of Melan- 
choly," when he is dealing with the delusions caused 
by echoes. "Theophilus (in Galen) thought he 
heard musick, from vapours which made his ears 
sound" ; 116 writes this trenchant observer. The qual- 
ity, the timbre of the Voice, due always, however 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 441 

accounted for, to identical causes, would thus remain 
characteristic. 

The persistence of primitive conceptions, which rest 
unchanged throughout the ingenious misinterpreta- 
tion of the centuries, is one of the most interesting 
of our mental phenomena. Their original connec- 
tions are often but dimly grasped by us now, if they 
are grasped at all. Who can say if the thinness and 
delicacy of the Voice, whose peculiar timbre has just 
been emphasized, may not have had an effect — by 
simple, logical inference — on the early conceptions of 
the soul, its appearance and characteristics? Tylor 
makes no comment on the relation between the primi- 
tive idea of the smallness of the soul, and the thin- 
ness of its voice ; but the idea of it as a miniature rep- 
lica of the body, as a mannikin, is strangely far- 
reaching. 117 

The Port-Lincoln blacks say the soul is so small it 
could pass through a chink, — and hover at the tops 
of the trees. It was about the size of a small 
child. 118 Certain Eskimos hold it to be no larger 
than a hand or a finger; while the Angmagsaliks de- 
scribe it as "a tiny man, the size of a sparrow." 119 
J. G. Frazer notes that it is regarded as a dwarf, 
unanimously, by all primitive peoples. In the 
Egyptian frescoes, as later, in the Italian (Orcagna), 
it is pictured as half life-size, often winged, or bird- 
like, floating over the head of its proprietor. 120 What 
later generations took for naivete of drawing in these 
pictures, is seen to be really the accurate presentation 
of a prevailing idea. Careful tracing of this concep- 
tion leads to its final connection with that group of 



442 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

ideas, sprung from animism, imagining a guardian or 
household spirit. Thus, the souls of the dead are, 
in their main characteristics, quite indistinguishable 
from the beings known to us to-day as fairies. They 
are light, flitting, delicate, and capricious, often 
malignant ; like the banshees of Ireland, or the zombis 
of Martinique. 121 This being, protean under the 
imaginations of men, is sometimes the attendant spirit, 
or daemon, or genius ; while later it becomes the guar- 
dian angel of the Middle Ages. Socrates and Philo, 
Brutus and Cardan, are holding no strange beliefs, 
but merely sharing the popular ideas of their day. 122 
No whit does their conception differ from that of the 
Carib, or the Mongol, or the Tasmanian native. 

Speculation as to the nature of these details is not, 
however, merely of a curious interest ; it is with mat- 
ter of broader analogy that we have to deal. So rich 
is the corroborative evidence among modern exam- 
ples, as among savage cases, that it becomes difficult 
not to overweight the page. Individual cases demon- 
strate the practical identity of savage and civilized 
mystical phenomena. To deny it, is to close one's eyes 
to fact; to shut one's mind to logic. The Khonds of 
Arissa, the negroes of Guinea, the aborigines of Amer- 
ica and Australia, are aided or tormented by crowds of 
good or evil spirits, which beset their path precisely as 
angels and demons beset the path of Teresa, of Jeanne 
des Anges, of Jeanne de St. Mathieu Deleloe, of Oth- 
loh, of Eaoul Glaber, of Mme. Guyon, of Swedenborg, 
of Joseph Smith. Vivid testimony to the belief in 
incubi and succubi will be found in the witch-trials 
of the seventeenth century, the selfsame belief pre- 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 443 

vailing among the natives of Samoa, of the Antilles, 
or of New Zealand. 123 Apparitions, whether of per- 
sons, white and glittering, of fiery pillars, or clouds, or 
points, 124 is no more a Christian belief than the guar- 
dian-angel, or the " Voice of God," are Christian be- 
liefs. The Christian took them where he found them, 
in the hearts and imaginations of the simple and the 
humble, of folk yet close to primitive feeling, and 
adapted them to his needs and to the needs of his 
new faith. 

The confessant may have evolved beyond the savage 
in the matter of magical rites ; although one no sooner 
makes such a statement than he is shaken by reading 
in the newspaper that an entire community in the 
State of Pennsylvania has been terrorized by the ap- 
pearance of a gigantic "hexe" (witch) cat, — killed 
finally by a silver bullet; or that some railroad has 
been disappointed in the results given by certain 
• 'dowsers" or diviners, which it employed to 
"dowse" for water. The visual and auditory phe- 
nomena which the confessant experiences, is associ- 
ated to-day with another set of ideas; these have 
grown more complex and are at work, moreover, upon 
organizations far more complex and far more sensitive. 
Deeper and more profound is the resultant disinte- 
gration; but we who read must not forget that it is 
this result and not the original cause which has 
changed. Is it possible to read, comparatively, the 
experiences narrated by Suso, Hoag, Linsley, Grat- 
ton, Jaco, Blair, Boston, Swedenborg, Smith, Lobb, 
Kichard Rolle, Juliana of Norwich, Antoinette Bour- 
ignon, Carre de Montgeron, George Fox (to name but 



444 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

few), — and not feel a deepening conviction of their 
essentially savage character? 

The hyper-suggestibility among moderns has been 
alleged as the special inducing cause of the intensity 
of their experience. At ceremonies of initiation a 
similar suggestibility governs the Australian, who thus 
readily beholds strange visions. 125 His medicine-man 
keeps aloof from the tribe, practises asceticism, and 
is as wild in speech and look as any Thebaid hermit. 
When about to assume his sacred function, he goes 
alone to the mouth of a certain cave, where he fasts 
and prays, until a spirit comes and pierces his tongue 
with a long spear. 126 This wound (it is photographed 
as a deep hole in the forepart of the tongue) is 
scarcely healed when he returns to the tribe; nor 
could the investigator discover that he ever after 
acknowledged it to have been made by himself or by a 
comrade. On the contrary, he persisted in saying 
and in believing it to be the work of a spirit. 
Our modern attitude is contemptuous of this cre- 
dulity; yet much in this whole experience suggests 
the phenomenon of the stigmata. Gorres notes that 
both the desire to possess these wounds and the ex- 
pectation of possessing them preceded their appear- 
ance in the hands and side of the subject, 127 and cites 
the instances of Veronique Giuliani, Margaret 
Ebnerin, Liduine, Jeanne de Jesu Maria, and others. 
Naturally we tend to believe more in our own medi- 
cine-men than in those of the Australian bushman, yet 
in examining the evidence of saintliness it were well 
to remember that things which are equal to the same 
thing are equal to each other. 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I 445 

In his chapters on " Mystical Flight, " Gorres re- 
cords the sensations of the saint as being rapidly and 
dizzily whirled through the air. 128 Several confess- 
ants support this description; and it has received 
much attention from medical and psychological au- 
thorities. This is hardly the place to enumerate their 
theories, which connect it either with reaction from 
a state of trance, or with definite epileptic seizure. 
The anthropologist succeeds in convincing us that the 
so-called mystical flight is not alone the property of 
the Christian mystic; for it is claimed also by the 
Buddhist, the Brahman, the Neo-Platonist ; — and 
that, in fact, belief in it is common to ascetics of all 
nations. 129 

Those fatal and sacred properties which savage 
imaginations attached to the fetich, seem to place this 
idea as far from the world of the Sistine Madonna as 
the custom of eating raw meat. Many confessants 
record such belief in full activity, and no farther 
than our own times. The book of Mormon refers to 
"the stone called Gazelem" (sic) which Joseph Smith 
carried in his pocket, and by whose aid he was able 
to induce a slightly hypnoid state in the gazer. From 
the description of this sacred "peep-stone," it ap- 
pears to have been nothing more nor less than the 
broken prism of an old-fashioned lustre chandelier ! 130 
In other records will be found mention of sacred 
medals and pictures ; 131 Pascal carried his amulet 
around his neck; and so this most savage of all 
aboriginal notions manifests, in an hundred different 
ways, its extraordinary persistency. To sum up ; not 
only the savage and the mediaeval, but the savage and 



446 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

the modern religious experience, are in reality so 
close, that the mind trained in the search for truth 
will find the differences between them far fewer than 
the resemblances. 



X 

THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 



I. The Middle Ages ; survivals. 
II. Revivals; witchcraft. 

III. Revival in the individual. 

IV. Explanation of phenomena; the "B-region"; Tabu and 

the Unpardonable Sin. 
V. Religion a collective term. 
VI. Recapitulation; conclusion. 



X 

THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 

The comparisons contained in the foregoing section 
have been made for a definite purpose and in the in- 
terest of a definite aim. That the cited experiences, 
one and all, have their origin deep in primal emotion, 
would seem indisputable, nor is it unreasonable to 
claim for them a distinct, emotional source. True, 
religion is more complex to-day, and its influence over 
modern life is wider and more various; yet this fact 
should not hide for us its emotional origin. If this 
sentiment was not always what it is to-day, neither 
were we always what we are to-day; the change is 
not the result of any one belief, it is the result of a 
gradual maturity of the human mind. 

"In the life of the rudest savage, religious belief 
is associated with intense emotion, with awful rever- 
ence, with agonizing terror, with rapt ecstasy, when 
sense and thought utterly transcend the common 
level of daily life. ' ' l Thus writes the anthropolo- 
gist; — and when we read his words, many of us feel 
a gentle glow of superiority, so sure we are that our 
ideals have grown to a higher stature, to a nobler 
beauty. There are many ways in which we have 
grown, indeed; and yet the final impression made by 

449 



450 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

reading any history of morals is, after all, not that 
Christianity has had so much influence upon the 
world's conduct, but that it has had so little. 2 No 
historian can make the Middle Ages other than re- 
pulsive; a dark, cruel, sick, savage period, a fruitful 
soil for emotional survivals. 

As the term " survival' ' was introduced into the 
world of anthropological research by Tylor, in his 
"Primitive Culture," his definition thereof shall 
serve us here. "These are processes," he writes, 
"customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been 
carried on by force of habit into a new state of 
society different from that in which they had their 
original home, and they thus remain as proofs and 
examples of an older condition of culture, out of which 
a newer has been evolved. ' ' 3 When one carries this 
definition a little further, out of the sphere of custom 
and habit, into that of emotion and feeling, one 
will be obliged to modify it considerably. Habit 
alone, for instance, is not sufficient to account for sur- 
vival in the field of emotion, and does not as a matter 
of fact so carry it on. As Tylor 's whole book shows, 
emotional survivals are almost always the result of 
special conditions, preserving certain feelings or ideas 
as it were artificially, and storing them up in the 
imaginations and hearts of a community, or a nation. 
These surviving feelings or ideas after a time drop 
out of active and conscious life; no longer used, they 
become passive, latent in the community; they re- 
semble the seeds of certain plants, which lie unsus- 
pected in the earth until the time has come for them 
to sprout once more. As we shall see later, this re- 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 451 

crudescence may be so active and vehement that it 
deserves the name "revival"; by which term Tylor 
defines the survival sprung to activity, under the in- 
fluence and the pressure of special conditions. 

When we come to consider religious survivals in 
particular, the question of the surrounding conditions 
has a vital importance; and a glance at the first ten 
centuries of the Christian era will go far toward ex- 
plaining the presence of some characteristic phe- 
nomena of survival. The conditions prevalent dur- 
ing the Middle Ages are owing to the passing of the 
ancient, to the rise of the modern, world. Such con- 
ditions united to favor emotional outbreaks by pre- 
senting the combination of great unrest and great ex- 
citement, acting on the lowered vitality of a world 
exhausted by famine and by war. The vigorous 
paganism of the past was dead, and the barbarian 
invasions swarmed upon those races who were striv- 
ing to revive and to re-make life. Fear and Famine 
were the nurses of our modern civilization; and the 
tales they told made so deep a mark upon men's 
minds that fragments of them linger here and there 
to this day. The religion of the masses was as ir- 
religious as it was possible to be ; 4 as irreligious as 
religion sprung from emotional survival seems at first 
bound to be. It had little connection with conduct; 
it was founded upon terror, upon egotism, upon hys- 
teria; it shows mankind at the cry of "Sauve qui 
peutl" running pell-mell from the hobgoblins itself 
had created. Noting the monstrous growth of super- 
stition, the profane and absurd stories which cling 
around the worship of the Virgin, Hallam cannot 



452 EELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

x ^ ,1 i 
refrain from commenting on the irreligious nature 
of this so-called religion; and wondering "if an en- 
tire absence of all religion might not have been less 
harmful, on the whole." 5 This is much from an 
historian who fails to see that these manifestations 
have sprung from a different source than the mani- 
festations which have aided the world in its ethical 
advance. 

The one thing known about the religious experience, 
is that its occurrence is invariably due to a combina- 
tion of lowered vitality plus emotional excitement. 
Individual cases have shown this condition repeated 
over and over again ; and certain religious movements, 
near to our own day, convince us yet again of its 
efficacy. Lowered vitality plus emotional excitement 
had a share of responsibility for the great dissenting 
movement of the eighteenth century in England; in 
our own land the sectarian agitation, the Great Ee- 
vival, 6 the springing-up of all types of extravagant 
belief, the Restorationists, the Shakers, the Latter-Day 
Saints, the Dunkards, down to the Christian Scientists, 
will all, if their origin be carefully examined, be found 
to have similar conditions as their inducing cause. 

In the early Middle Ages, such conditions were ful- 
filled, not merely for scattered individuals, nor iso- 
lated groups, but for humanity at large. Primitive 
feeling held an unchecked sway over the masses; 
while the effect of Christianity, with its strong emo- 
tional appeal, was to heighten and to intensify all 
primitive feeling; to act as stimulus to the emotional 
side of religion. For many centuries previously, 
emotional faith had appeared to weaken and to ebb. 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 453 

Philosophy had failed, by reason of its intellectual 
demand, to formulate a creed for the humble. 
Christianity gave both an impetus and a voice to the 
forces slumbering then, as now, in the very being of 
the race. It released and directed a body of senti- 
ments by whose aid alone man could advance in his 
evolution. But at the same time, along with these 
primitive emotional forces there were aroused and 
set into action other forces just as primitive, but by 
no means as beneficent, which are indissolubly bound 
up with the life of the emotions. Many of these 
forces are present, but are no longer constant in their 
operation upon the human mind; they may be sum- 
moned into activity only by special influences and 
under special conditions. Perhaps they may be best 
described by the term "vestigiary." 

Working together with active forces, these vestig- 
iary forces have helped in furthering the spread 
of Christianity. Our examples have shown how 
they made their appearance in the doctrines of 
Christian belief, and in what ways they have been 
incorporated with these doctrines. Much of this 
incorporation was done later, when the Fathers made 
their ingenious attempt to account for all things 
according to a strictly Christian interpretation; — 
but much also was present at the very beginning, 
for which only vestigiary remains can account. Be- 
cause we see in the Golden Rule, in Christ's ideal 
of brotherhood, a flattering evidence of development 
from the abysmal state of cruelty and brute force, — 
because these divine things are to be found in his 
teaching, we must not forget the vestigiary savage 



454 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

conceptions therein, reward and punishment, hell and 
heaven, vision, and magical power and exorcism. 
Because a new ethical need and a new ideal caused 
man to accept this purer faith, does not mean that 
he had utterly cast aside his savage emotional tradi- 
tions. On the contrary, the first effect of Christianity 
was to re-vitalize these. 

The anthropologist tells us that this nucleus of ves- 
tigiary emotion — this terror and worship of the un- 
known spirits which is called "animism" — had be- 
come, in those cloudy ages when it was not vestigiary 
but active, the seat and source of the religious senti- 
ment. Later formalistic tendencies, the influence of 
a priestly hierarchy, intent on "performing the 
proper act in the proper way," somewhat suppressed 
these animistic feelings, causing them to play less 
part than they had played previously in the na- 
tional life and religion of men. History is one 
long struggle between these tendencies, now the one, 
now the other, predominating; now the hierarchy 
crushing the people, now the prophet stimulating 
them to protest afresh. Under the spur of Christ's 
personality, and his sensitive relation of all feeling to 
conduct and ideals, this nucleus of ancient, primitive 
forces, developed a sudden and overmastering vitality. 
In proportion as the Son of Man was real to men, so 
his influence revived and strengthened their capacity 
for emotion. He taught them the beauty of feeling, 
the value of feeling, the essential need of feeling ; and 
thus was evolved a whole group of emotions, which 
before had been but rudimentary. They spring up 
and flower, changing the entire aspect of the earth to 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 4,55 

men; who had not noticed how the seeds had lain 
hid in these barren places. When one reads Augus- 
tin's "Confessions," he may behold the unfolding and 
the flowering of this garden of the Soul. 

Founded upon and rooted in primal emotion, the 
religious experiences contained in the documents of 
confession, must be finally dissociated from the pro- 
cesses connected with the formation of intellectual 
opinion. As their genesis is different, so is their evo- 
lution. They are intimately related to, if not actually 
a part of, the mystical tendency. Many of these ex- 
amples might be best described as depicting a condi- 
tion of temporary mysticism accompanying and 
following change of belief. This body of experience, 
presenting the various phases of Depression, Conver- 
sion, and Reaction, is but the repeated individual 
expression of forces which were yet more active and 
dominating in primitive man. Under the gradual 
movement of modern life, many of these forces have, 
no doubt, been largely outgrown. Cold and dead in 
some persons, in others we find them present, but 
latent, and, as it were, vestigiary. These forces thus 
remain in most modern individuals only as survivals. 

Although all survivals are not religious, yet the 
question of survival and revival has an especial bear- 
ing on all manifestations of religion. Ritual in itself 
has been observed to be a great f ossilizer of survivals ; 
the amber which has preserved many early religious 
ideas. "La persistance du rite est la raison des sur- 
vivanees," says Doutte, speaking of the survival in 
Mussulman festival and folk-lore. 7 



456 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

It is to the outworn custom one must loot for traces 
of ancient survivals, many of which are, even in this 
latter age, deeply embedded in the very foundations 
of our complex civilization. The revival, however, is 
by no means to be closely compared with a fossil. It 
occurs where the survival has received the impulse 
of life; it is a nucleus, a centre of energy, whether 
benignant or malignant, wholly changing and dom- 
inating the subject. This revival most frequently 
occurs in crowds, where the stimulus of contagion is 
added to the other stimuli, with powerful effect; but 
it is not infrequently to be found in sporadic, iso- 
lated, and individual cases, cases which often are the 
furthest removed from the possibility of contagion. 
Tylor mentions, though only in passing, certain in- 
stances of this individual revival, and observes that 
it follows the same course as does the crowd-revival. 8 

Before considering the examples of revival in the 
individual, let us pause to survey the course of those 
crowd-revivals whose influence on history has made 
them more familiar to our minds. So marked is their 
trail that even those of us who fail to comprehend 
their psychology are willing to accept them as a suf- 
ficient excuse for many amazing aberrations, for many 
startling events. To enumerate and analyze them 
would lead far from the present task, but their origin 
must not be forgotten in its direct bearing on our 
enquiry. 

"As men's minds change in progressing culture, 
old customs and opinions fade gradually in the new 
and uncongenial atmosphere, or pass into states more 
congruous with the new life around them. . . . 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 457 

Studying with a wide view the course of human opin- 
ion, we may now and then trace on from the very 
turning-point the change from passive survival into 
active revival. Some well-known belief or custom 
has for centuries shown symptoms of decay ... it 
bursts forth again with a vigor often as marvellous 
as it is unhealthy. ' ' 9 Should the reader desire con- 
firmation of this passage, let him return to the chap- 
ters on "Data," of this book, and read once more 
the documents relating to witchcraft. He will appre- 
ciate that each intellectual advance has been followed 
by an emotional reaction of equal sweep, during one 
of which, fostered by certain special tendencies latent 
in Christianity itself, the savage survival of witch- 
craft leapt into vivid and malign activity. As an 
epidemic, witchcraft had been chronic among the 
lower races and is still chronic among them. To us, 
as the anthropologist remarks, "its main interest lies 
in the extent and accuracy with which the theory of 
survival explains it. ' ' 10 The main idea of witchcraft 
is savage; all the rites connected with it are savage. 
Various minor fluctuations of this revival carry down 
to our own day its degrading and evil influence. 
1 rhe Mormon outbreak, — the outbreak of demoniacal 
possession in Switzerland in 1861, — the outbreak of 
Spiritualism in the eighties, 11 — all will be found to 
exhibit the same typical savage characteristics, symp- 
toms, and progress. 

Any relation of the individual confessant to these 
groups, and his classification among the data of sav- 
age survival, are not the work of theory, they are the 
work of the confessant himself. As one reads of his 



458 EELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

personal conflict, in volume after volume, this con- 
clusion is not fortuitous, it is inevitable. Only the 
clerical eye could have failed to see where he be- 
longed and to place him there years ago. His own 
heartrending description of his feelings, his intensity, 
particularity, and vividness of imaginative concep- 
tion, — these lend us the light wherewith to under- 
stand him. In every word he utters, he paints for us 
the progress of his savage revival. In every word 
he utters, he makes plain to us the nature of his mon- 
strous and pathetic delusion. For, what seems to him 
Divine, what seems to him to be the work of God, or 
the Voice of God, or the God-designed means for his 
arrival at ultimate security and salvation, we now 
know to be in its origins something wholly and gro- 
tesquely different, something linked not with the 
higher, but with the lower, issues of man's nature; 
something connected not with what we human crea- 
tures have become, but with what we once were, aeons 
since ; something hideously close to that other savage 
revival of witchcraft, sprung from brute cruelty and 
terror. 

Let us examine further into the literature of the 
witch-confession, in order both to connect it with the 
data of religious confession and to draw comparisons 
between these two survivals. By the light of the law 
of association of ideas many of the incidents in the 
witch-testimonies take on a fresh significance. Cer- 
tain among them illuminate, in a striking manner, 
much that has seemed hitherto incredibly bizarre to 
our civilized intelligence. 

The unfortunates on trial for the crime of witch- 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 459 

craft make many references to the so-called " Witches' 
Sabbat." Whether in Scotland or in France, — 
whether in the thirteenth or the seventeenth century, 
these references are identical, and are equally sug- 
gestive of savagery. The dress, indecent and fan- 
tastic, of the participants, the drum-beat summoning 
the assembly to the woods at night, the devil-worship 
and the frantic dance, the cannibal sacrifice, followed 
by an indescribable orgy, — all these things are read 
by the modern student under his quiet lamp, while he 
shudders at the perversity of the human imagination. 
To his mind, such conceptions bespeak a sort of wicked 
lunacy. 12 But let him turn to the sober narrative of 
the African traveller, and he will find the same fes- 
tival set down therein, in cold print, as an everyday 
incident of aboriginal life. Stripped of all connec- 
tion with our Occidental Devil (for no savage mind 
had ever the genius to create that figure ! ) , the ritual 
of this feast is not changed in a single detail. 13 Yes- 
terday, to-day, to-morrow, — the drums beat, the 
Congo villagers, smeared with paint, gather in the 
forest for a debauch, to which not one of the most 
hideous fancies of the Middle Ages will be found 
lacking. There follows the natural question, How 
came the Middle Ages to know about such things? 

Ages since, such customs had faded from the lives 
of European nations. 14 There are traces of them to 
be found in ancient Eastern creeds ; the frenzy of the 
Maenads had a similar origin ; but they must long have 
been but matter of vestigiary memory. Yet, since 
the word " vestige* ' means a track or footprint, it 
may be accurately employed in showing the tracks 



460 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

left in men's imaginations by the vanished customs 
of their tribal period. Under the spur of sharp ter- 
ror, — and terror of the Unknown, — that faded, but 
not obliterated memory of the aboriginal orgy, began 
to revive, stimulated into a show of life and color. 
Out of the black pit of the past arose these ugly and 
tormenting images, crowding to perplex a poor, un- 
balanced creature under the menace of death. Per- 
haps the tale of some traveller at the village inn had 
been enough to start the train of ideas — to stir and 
animate these latent associations. The folk-lore of 
little communities, the stories told by father to son, 
by mother to daughter, is the amber which has en- 
folded and preserved these survivals; until that 
moment, when, under favorable conditions, they were 
to burst forth into vigorous and unhealthy activity. 

"There are no pages of European history more 
filled with horror,' ' says Dr. Lea, "than those which 
record the witch-madness of three centuries. ' ' 15 
This "disease of the imagination" was heightened 
and stimulated by persecution; details which had 
been but cloudy, became, under cross-examination, 
full and horrible ; the torture of the accused produced 
fresh material at each step, which each further case 
assimilated and amplified. The psychology of the 
witch-confessant shows a progressive state of hysteri- 
cal fear and of imaginative nervous delusion. The 
details gained upon cross-examination of these cases, 
became more and more dreadful as the cross-examina- 
tion progressed ; 16 as the unfortunate turned, step by 
step, back to his aboriginal condition, these vestigiary 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 461 

memories, revived and stimulated under the pressure 
of terror, soon reduced the poor creature to the level 
of the sheer brute. Torture always succeeded in 
producing the answers desired by the torturers, 
answers apparently confirming their belief. Lead- 
ing questions led to uniform replies, and thus "a 
tolerably coherent formula was developed to which 
all witches were expected to conform. ' ' 17 At times, 
the confessions were truthful accounts of illusions 
really entertained, and thus are comparable to 
the visions of the mystics. 18 More often, they were 
the mere result of the torture applied to produce 
them. Dr. Lea is of the opinion that in some cases 
the imaginations of the Witches' Sabbat were evoked 
as a relief from the subject's sordid poverty, or 
to account to himself for excesses of temperament 
which had no other outlet. 19 However this may be, 
it is indisputable that many old beliefs and folk- 
tales were seized upon and incorporated into these 
delusions, forming a repository of elder, half-for- 
gotten superstitions. The ancient pagan idea of 
night-riders; the Norse ' ' trolla-thing, " or nocturnal 
gathering of witches, to dance upon the first of May, 
becomes, by a slow and portentous growth, connected 
with the idea of a pact with Satan, and so grew to the 
Witches' Sabbat of the fourteenth century. 20 ''Com- 
mon to the superstitions of many races," writes Dr. 
Lea, ' ' its origin cannot be definitely assigned to any ' ' ; 
and he observes that both the Church and the law 
were at a loss to account for the wide prevalence of 
the belief, and for the marked similarity in its fea- 



462 EELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

tures. 21 Details varied little ; human sacrifice and can- 
nibalism were the main rites asserted, delusions 
eagerly confessed, and persisted in to the stake. 22 

The account given by Dr. Lea of the witch-trials 
under the Inquisition, at the time the epidemic was 
at its height, furnishes the most complete and strik- 
ing confirmation of its connection with savage re- 
vival. The personal influences, the psychological in- 
fluences, the physical influences, all made for this re- 
vival and its effect upon the mind of the individual. 
Confession was to be exacted by torture, mental and 
physical, and every possible means was used to entrap 
the unfortunate or obstinate subject. His situation, 
therefore, was entirely favorable to the florescence of 
the revival in his personality. He needed only the 
spur of terror for his passive survivals to spring into 
active revival. He did not need knowledge of aborig- 
inal customs ; the knowledge was in his blood ; it was 
naturally evoked by a certain train of ideas, under a 
certain nervous stimulus. With real savages he was 
not in contact, unless it should be with Irish tra- 
ditions; while of that aboriginal feast which is 
the prototype of the Sabbat, he had never even heard. 
The Middle Ages could know nothing of the Aus- 
tralian bushman, or of the African negro. Books 
were few; and most of the people affected by the re- 
vival could not read. All the beliefs and customs con- 
nected with witchcraft and magic sprang from, and 
have remained with, the peasant, part of an inherit- 
ance which he has not yet outgrown. 

The hysterical on trial for her life must immedi- 
ately have become the unconscious focus, for a 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 463 

revival of these conceptions. She, her judges, and 
her audience were for the time being swayed by a wave 
of primordial terror. Such reasoning powers as they 
possessed were submerged by a flood of racial feelings 
and recollections. The confessants themselves bear 
witness to this state, in no uncertain language. Made- 
leine Bavent, describing the incidents at the Witches' 
Sabbat, repeats that she cannot be sure what she be- 
held while there. It is remembered as in a cloud. 23 
Like Richard of St. Victor, she does not plead this 
vagueness as evidence in her favor ; she merely makes 
note of it; to us, it is a proof that the whole experi- 
ence belonged to what r James calls so aptly the "B-re- 
gion" 24 of her consciousness. Neither do the Mor- 
mon elders attribute to any psychological influence the 
extraordinary behavior of some of their converts dur- 
ing the revivals at Kirtland, in Ohio. The young 
men and women would imitate the scalping and 
whooping of the Indians; would try to speak in the 
various Indian dialects; would be, writes one of the 
elders, "completely metamorphosed into Indians." 25 
The fear and horror of Red Men was not so far, per- 
haps, from these unfortunates, as the fear and horror 
of devils from the witch-conf essant ; but at Kirtland 
it was, at least, just as unnecessary, just as markedly 
the result of pure revival; sprung from the "B- 
region" of consciousness. "This B-region," writes 
the psychologist, ". . . is obviously the larger part 
of each of us, for it is the abode of everything 
that is latent, and the reservoir of everything that 
passes unrecorded or unobserved. It contains, for 
example, such things as all our momentarily inac- 



464 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

tive memories, and it harbors the springs of all 
our obscurely motived passions, impulses, likes, dis- 
likes, and prejudices. Our intuitions, hypotheses, 
fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions, and in 
general all our non-rational operations come from it. 
It is the source of our dreams and apparently they 
may return to it. In it arise whatever mystical ex- 
periences we may have, and ... it is also the foun- 
tain-head of much that feeds our religion. ' ' 26 

Although the conclusions of William James are not 
those of the present investigation, yet one must not un- 
derestimate the service he has rendered by so clear a 
definition of this extra-marginal portion of our con- 
sciousness. The data of the emotional religious experi- 
ence have their origin in this region, from which all 
survivals take their rise. Holy saint and hysterical 
nun are alike in this, that the disturbance which has 
been caused in the "B-region" by the rise and domina- 
tion of some survival, has, in them, preoccupied and 
possessed the entire personality, to the total exclu- 
sion of all those factors which make for the normal 
life of human beings. Under pressure, that which 
existed in the beginning but as a passive, latent sur- 
vival, has become an active revival, has pressed for- 
ward upon what James calls "the full, sun-lit con- 
sciousness "; until it alters and clouds the latter be- 
yond recognition. 

Surely, it is natural that human creatures, find- 
ing these strange ideas rising out of themselves, 
should try to explain them, should try to relate 
them to some unknown fact. The more healthy- 
minded tend to link them with everything they dis- 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 465 

like and cannot understand. Thus, the early Chris- 
tians came to be accused of various practices having 
their origin in savage survival ; thus, in the Olympian 
hand of a Goethe, the Walpurgis-nacht superstition 
became a symbol of man's lower nature. To us, these 
beliefs furnish clear evidence of their common source, 
and more than that, their particular character points 
to that source in primitive savage animism. 

The individual, as an exponent of the phenomena 
of revival, has been little studied up to the present 
time. Tylor notes Swedenborg as having been in- 
tensely animistic, both in doctrine and personality. 27 
"Mrs. Piper, the medium," writes Andrew Lang, 
"exhibits a survival, or recrudescence of savage phe- 
nomena. " 28 The data collected in the foregoing 
chapter on heredity, health, and early piety, are gath- 
ered from many persons predestined, mentally and 
nervously, to be the subject for such revival. Many 
an one has found himself suddenly quite helpless in 
the grip of terrors and agonies risen to confront him 
out of the very depths of his nature. These are hor- 
rors, hydra-headed, uncontrollable, perverse, made of 
the naked stuff of the cave-man. No wonder that 
the humble and ignorant — the John Bunyans and 
John Crooks, the David Halls and Joseph Smiths, and 
Joanna Southcotts of this world — are smitten by them. 
Moreover, there is good reason why such as these are 
especially prone to be the subject of revival. "The 
primitive Aryan," Dr. Frazer reminds us, "in all 
that regards his mental fibre and texture is not ex- 
tinct. He is among us to this day. The great in- 
tellectual and moral forces which have revolutionized 



466 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

the educated world, have scarcely affected the peasant. 
In his inmost beliefs he is what his forefathers 
were." 29 With the peasant, the belief and practice 
based on the higher animism remain existent as an- 
cestral relics, — as vestigiary, passive survivals. 

The startling effect of the whole series of experi- 
ences to the individual, is thus in a manner explained. 
The confessant reiterates the novelty, the strangeness 
of his feeling, the well-nigh indescribable character 
of his suffering. It is not matter of his immediate 
knowledge, it is something from outside. It is strik- 
ing, bizarre, fantastically new, much as to our eyes 
those first, fossil shapes of the great saurians seemed 
altogether new, and for the same reason. The aver- 
age person, living his peaceful, civilized life, and con- 
scious of no hoofed satyrs rising to torment him out 
of his savage past, will argue that evolution has rid 
him of all these barbarities. True it is that many 
of them do appear to be on the wane. During the 
Middle Ages, the witchcraft revival attacked all per- 
sons without discrimination. Such superstitions are 
fewer to-day. The power of suggestion in controlling 
them is man's most civilizing influence. But so long 
as men are men, so long will they be liable, under 
given conditions, to recurrence of these revivals, if 
often under new forms. The fact that at the moment 
the number of individuals undergoing the particular 
revival involved in emotional religious experience, is 
fewer than in the past, is no argument for its even- 
tual disappearance. Almost any one can recall in his 
acquaintance some person who has been completely, if 
temporarily, altered by some new belief, some one who 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 467 

has made an emotional turn to Christian Science, or 
some other sect, and who has but given a new name to 
this age-long experience. 

The average person may look in vain for any tokens 
of its existence within himself. But let those given 
conditions occur, — let the process once start, — let the 
force of emotion, like a hidden spring, release the 
passive survival so that it grows to active revival, — 
then the mental law of association between ideas may 
be counted upon to do the rest. He who began with 
mere depression, dissatisfaction, and preoccupation 
with self, is like to go on to torments, to horrors, to 
abnormalities of thought and behavior, to visions and 
voices, to ecstasies and trances; he will be changed 
beyond his own power of recognition. "My visage 
altered," says Thomas Laythe, "so that my friends 
were alarmed." Myles Halhead's wife remonstrates 
with him on his changed appearance and behavior. 
Thomas Ware seemed little better than a maniac. 
George Story appeared to himself actually more like 
a beast than a rational creature. The friends of Alex- 
ander Gordon, and of Mary Fletcher, were much wor- 
ried by their looks. On every hand, the families of 
the confessants testify to the extraordinary, and in 
most cases deteriorating, effect of the experience. For 
generations their remonstrance has been made to stand 
as persecution by the world or the Devil, and it mat- 
tered little if it were the plea of Salimbene's father, 
or the impatient protest of some employer of Method- 
ist or Quaker, — all were set aside in the same category. 

Nervous contagion and epidemic hysteria no doubt 
aided the development of the conversion-process to- 



468 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

ward its typical crisis. Fantastic ideas, before un- 
dreamt-of, often take complete hold on the subject's 
mind. In the witch-trials one may read accounts pf 
devil-worship or the Witches' Sabbat, — accounts de- 
tailed in their brutal obscenity, — from the lips of deli- 
cate, cloistered women or of innocent girls. No won- 
der that diabolical possession was the only rational 
explanation to their audiences of such horrors. Be- 
lief in a Devil had at least this advantage, it threw 
all responsibility for the results of a disturbance into 
the "B-region' ? where it seemed to belong, ridding 
poor humanity of the burden. It is well for us 
to remember and repeat, — in case we should ever come 
to grips with these things, — that, under normal condi- 
tions, these feelings should not be brought into the 
light at all, for they belong to those obscurely regis- 
tered impressions which are a part of our animal in- 
heritance. 

An answer may be here suggested to some of the 
questions which were asked at the outset of this en- 
quiry. That disintegrating force, which we have seen 
to operate so disastrously upon personality, is gener- 
ated by a spontaneous revival, in the individual, of 
vestigiary, savage animism. Sprung into action as 
the result of certain given conditions, this revival 
starts upon its regular progress that process known as 
emotional religious experience, manifested in the three 
phases of Depression, Conversion, and Reaction. For 
this process, under whatever variations, the animistic 
revival is completely responsible. Different sections 
of the present study have been devoted to analyzing 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 469 

the predisposing conditions and immediate causes of 
such revival; while others show why the merely 
pathological or medical-materialist theory is unable to 
explain it, and why the mystical-compromise theory is 
unable to explain it. Once set in action, this influx 
of animistic emotions and impulses, — simply founded 
on Fear and Worship of what is unknown — operates 
as a disrupting agency upon the subject's personality, 
and causes an acute distress until its course is run; 
or until peace returns through the medium of direct, 
psychological suggestion. Why suggestion has this 
power at the crisis, science has not yet made clear to 
us ; the condition of the subject appears to predispose 
him to a high degree of suggestibility at such a time. 
There are cases in which the coalescence altogether 
fails to take place; when, instead of steady progress 
toward a mystical or semi-mystical culmination, fol- 
lowed in due course by a return to normal conditions, 
the process assumes proportions properly termed path- 
ological, and the personality of the subject remains 
disrupted (or, as we commonly say, unbalanced) for 
the rest of his life. Unquestionably, there is justice 
in the observation that this state is in itself prone to 
foster any latent nervous or mental disease. This 
does not mean, however, that it is in itself to be classed 
as disease, any more than our vestigiary physical re- 
mains are to be classed as deformities. 

When we come to look upon this process as vestig- 
iary, it is evident that it must not be looked on 
either as an "ideally-normal" condition, or as a 
purely pathological condition. It is a process strictly 
natural, as natural, let us say, as fear of the dark, 



470 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

as natural as little else about us is natural. Be- 
longing to that group of primitive instincts which man 
has tended but imperceptibly to outgrow, its sudden 
development unsettles the balance which civilization 
has had such difficulty in maintaining. When these 
hidden sluice-gates open in the depths of being, there 
are dangers for all our higher qualities in the rise of 
that dark and secret flood. The great contemplatives 
and mystics, whose lives have presented the seeming 
paradox of activity, both mundane and supra-mun- 
dane, have been able to hold it in check, so that their 
creative and intellectual centres were not thereby sub- 
merged. Need we add that such ability belongs only 
to the rarest type of genius? 

Science is more or less ignorant of the special 
causes which unite to produce this outbreak of animism 
in the individual; but it shows from the data that a 
prerequisite is the lowering of the vital forces. This 
lowering results most often from the approach of pu- 
berty, with depressing social surroundings, poverty, 
vice, infirmity, or ill-health, as contributing causes. 
When these conditions have been fulfilled to an extent 
affecting society at large (as in the Middle Ages, or in 
the United States just after the War of Independ- 
ence), there results a general outbreak of animistic re- 
vivals of all sorts. Individuals of robust vitality may 
be found among our examples, who suddenly, after se- 
rious illness or strain, find themselves confronted with 
this experience, almost invariably heralded by pre- 
liminary depression, restlessness, and fear about self. 
Where these individual cases, at this critical moment, 
come into contact with crowd-revivals and their conta- 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 471 

gion, the process is naturally heightened and hastened. 
The savage origin of the savage manifestations prev- 
alent in crowd-revivals has been sufficiently insisted 
upon in these pages ; to the student of Mormonism, of 
the Evangelical movement, of the Great Revival, their 
abysmal source is marked as plainly as that of witch- 
craft in the past. 

"C'est le prop re des etats de l'ame," writes Kenan, 
"ou naissent l'extase et les apparitions, d'etre conta- 
gieux. L'histoire de toutes les grandes crises reli- 
gieuses prouve que ces sortes de visions se 
communiquent, dans une assemblee des personnes 
remplies de memes croyances. ' ' 30 The history given 
by Jonathan Edwards, in his "Narrative," already 
mentioned in these pages, becomes a notable con- 
firmation of the theory of savage revival. Start- 
ing in a small New England village in 1735, the so- 
called "Great Revival" spread, "with fresh and ex- 
traordinary incomes of the spirit, ' ' to the neighboring 
towns, causing widespread religious excitement. The 
initial suggestion, according to Edwards, was due to 
"an apprehension that the world was near to its end, 
which," he naively adds, "was altogether false." 31 
Here was evidently another manifestation of that 
spontaneous Fear, which has been responsible for 
so many an emotional outbreak in human history. 32 
Direct nervous contagion had its share, for Edwards 
notes the suicide of an unfortunate during this period, 
which became the starting-point for an epidemic of 
suicide. Conditions are here depicted all the more 
striking because of the "misinterpreted observation" 
through which they have been preserved. That New 



472 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

England farmer, urged by the blind forces in his be- 
ing to cringe, terror-stricken, before an angry Deity, 
seems to fall back many centuries into savagery. 

The reader must not infer that only among the 
simple and the credulous are these forces to be found 
at work. Were this true, they would have far less 
importance. On the contrary savage survivals lie 
close about the lives of the most fastidious and com- 
plex of men. Each one of us, in fact, might exclaim 
with the poet : — 

"Within my blood my ancient kindred spoke, 
Grotesque and monstrous voices, heard afar 
Down ocean caves when behemoth awoke." 33 

And yet how few of us realize that these voices are 
''grotesque and monstrous" — how many of us, with 
the pathetic misinterpretation of the past, have con- 
nected them 

"with that far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves!" 

If we will but set them in their proper place, much 
that seemed uncomfortably fantastic about them will 
be explained; much that seemed unreasonable will 
seem so no longer. The remains of fetichism in the 
churches will seem as natural to us as the re- 
mains of fetichism in every nursery. 34 Man will no 
longer hold God responsible for that mass of fancies, 
lingering over from abysmal days in the "B -region" 
of his fellow-creatures. He will understand why re- 
ligious concepts are attached to all sorts of material 
objects by the imaginations of the devout; why spe* 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 473 

cial devotions to special dogmas have served to arouse 
and to feed all forms of animistic survival. 35 The 
Incarnation and the Passion, the Sacred Heart and 
the Holy Sacrament, awakened in the imaginations of 
Peter Favre, of Carlo da Sezze, of M. M. Alacoque, 
and Baptiste Varani, typical emotions leaving no 
doubt as to their animistic origin. A leaden medal 
to Alphonse de Ratisbonne, a fragment of prism from 
an old-fashioned lustre chandelier to Joseph Smith, 
partook of a sacred character, wholly animistic both in 
its sources and manifestations. 

The theory of animistic revival fully accounts for 
all the more perplexing features of the religious ex- 
perience. The destructive effect of the process on the 
subject's creative energies is thus seen to be the 
natural result of its origin. The black despair, the 
"rending and tearing, " the " aridity," the paralysis 
of the springs of effort, — these have appeared inex- 
plicable and contradictory, even to those who believe 
the process to be in the nature of a new birth. The 
apparent dissociation of the feelings aroused by this 
process from all current standards of morality, has 
raised a doubt in the mind of many eminent religious 
leaders, and one which the involved contradiction 
alone forbade them to express. This dissociation will 
be noticed both in general and in particular. The 
influence on its votaries of a wave of emotional re- 
ligious revival is far oftener lowering than it is up- 
lifting. Nothing could be more immoral or irreligious 
in its tone than Mormonism, with its prophet 's drunk- 
enness, its licensed sensuality, its frenzy of supersti- 
tion, unless, perhaps, it be the polytheistic Christianity 



474 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

of the Middle Ages, of which Hallam expresses such 
doubts. 

Why a person in the act of "getting religion" 
should immediately develop an abnormal egotism, 36 
melancholy and gloom ; 37 with marked indifference to 
another's feelings, 38 and insensibility to other claims 
and wishes ; 39 should become an ungrateful child, 40 an 
unkind brother, 41 a neglectful parent, 42 — and all to 
please his God, — this has been one of the paradoxes. 
By other paradoxes, no less startling, has the Chris- 
tian dogmatist endeavored to account for them ; while 
the conflict between our human and our religious 
duties has for centuries tormented the unhappy race 
of the conscientious. That this conflict is not exag- 
gerated, the confessants themselves bear witness; — it 
has been the sharpest scourge in the hand of so- 
called piety. When poor little Jeanne de St. M. 
Deleloe became a novice at sixteen, she attributes her 
grief at leaving home to the Devil's work. 

The virtues of self-absorption are dwelt upon in a 
manner highly suggestive. Examples have already 
been quoted. When her husband died, Mme. Guy on 
hastened to praise God that he had broken her bonds. 
The mother of Guibert de Nogent left her delicate boy 
alone in the world while she sought salvation in the 
cloister. Therese of the Holy Child was the fifth sister 
to take the veil, thereby leaving empty her old father's 
house. "Keligion," comments William James, "is a 
monumental chapter in the history of human ego- 
tism!" 

Obviously, these ideas of duty are not our ideas; 
in our eyes, they appear rather to suggest a doc- 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 475 

trine of "Sauve qui peutl" Sprung from animism, 
this manifestation of selfish terror becomes a nat- 
ural result, founded on a certain logical basis. 
We are shocked to-day when we hear of such in- 
stances, but most of us regard them as exceptional. 
What we have utterly failed to recognize is that such 
egotism is fundamental, nay, even essential. Similar 
insensibility is manifest in all cases of animistic re- 
vival; it is not fortuitous or accidental, it is sympto- 
matic and characteristic. It is the one constant fac- 
tor, among the many variable factors, of this experi- 
ence. Its presence constitutes an unfailing token of 
the animistic revival. The gloom, the aridity, the 
suffering of the subject, are the natural outcome of 
the struggle between brute, selfish terror and any of 
his higher ideals and feelings which evolution may 
have developed. During such a conflict the Ego 
forces itself on the attention of the subject, and ac- 
quires an exaggerated importance in his eyes. Hence 
his cry, hence his terror, hence his protest that he had 
better lose the whole world than his own soul. Recog- 
nition of this condition resulted in the dogmatic 
teaching of egotism. The mediaeval mind was given 
to formulae, while the mere existence of these facts 
was warrant for the fathers to nail them fast to some 
text. The hardest task of the last century has been 
to draw many of these nails, which fasten the right 
facts to the wrong explanations. Mediaevalism was 
not content to acknowledge this fundamental, animis- 
tic selfishness as selfishness, but must adopt and preach 
it. Peter of Alcantara warns against "the indis- 
creet zeal of trying to do good to others. " 43 John of 



476 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Avila, counselling the neophyte to forget national 
and family duties for those duties so-called, of heaven, 
adds a chapter "On the Vanity of Good Works.' ' 
These he finds full of danger, since they tend to 
interest one in this world instead of in the next ! 44 
Milman observes, in comment: "Christianity, to be 
herself again, must not merely shake off indignantly 
the barbarism, the vices, but even the virtues of mo- 
nastic, of Latin Christianity. ' ' 45 The further com- 
ment made by science will be to the effect that Chris- 
tianity was most herself, in those days when all her 
standards and most of her ideals were the standards 
and the ideals resulting from the influence of ani- 
mistic revival. 46 

The characteristics of the animistic revival are at 
all times and under all circumstances so definite, so 
recognizable, that it is no wonder the Middle Ages 
should attach to them a supernatural cause, or should 
distort their effects into a form of ethical code. Most 
of these effects we should not to-day dare to term 
virtues. We realize their brute nature, their origin 
in a time when religion and conduct were separate, 
dissociated ideas. Many of the qualities vaunted in 
the mediaeval religious life, are now known to have 
sprung from the day when man trembled he knew not 
why, and adored he knew not what, — and their pres- 
ence is as plain as such another survival as the child 's 
fear of the dark, and to be accounted for in the same 
way. 

When such revival is in progress there ensues 
a temporarily disintegrating effect upon the morals 
and philosophy of the subject. It could hardly be 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 477 

otherwise when one realizes the potency of the forces 
generated and the instability of the material upon 
which they operate. The excitement sets up currents 
and counter-currents, actions and reactions. Civiliza- 
tion does not, as some of our novelists would have it, 
fall from the shoulders like a discarded garment at 
the first touch of any passion. Hereditary self-con- 
trol, hereditary balance and reason, and sense of 
duty, do not resign their empire without a struggle 
with this antagonist, risen, in Stevenson's apt phrase, 
1 1 out of the slime of the pit. " It is this age-long con- 
flict between Man as he is and Man as he used to be, — 
to describe which writers have exhausted their vocab- 
ulary of poignant and pathetic words, — that has 
caused more than half the misery of the world. 

The mystic himself has had, at moments, a realiza- 
tion of this truth. Barbanson depicted his agony in 
the phrase, "divisio nature ac spiritus." To more 
than one sufferer under the torture of that peculiarly 
horrible survival, the Unpardonable Sin, there has 
come the gleam of a feeling that, after all, what he 
suffers is an anomaly in the teaching of one so gentle 
as Jesus of Nazareth, — that his despair must have 
grown up from a deeper root than the mere suggestion 
in a text. Suggestion it is, but far more in the nature 
of primordial suggestion. The paragraphs dealing 
with the origin of the Unpardonable Sin have already 
connected it with other concepts having their source 
in primitive Fear. Its qualities of intensity, pecul- 
iarity, and vagueness of definition support this rela- 
tion ; while it was shown that the confusion among the 
Fathers respecting its nature was as striking as their 



478 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

unanimous recognition of its prevalence and power. 
They did not, of course, relate it to the act of name- 
less impiety lying at the root of the idea of primitive 
tabu, which few savage tribes are without. It remains 
for the modern student to see in these two conceptions 
— the breaking of the primitive tabu, and the Unpar- 
donable Sin — a strong family resemblance. The latter 
would seem only readily explained if we see it in the 
light of a survival of the former. The tabu has all 
the equivocal characteristics of danger and fatality 
which hung about sacred things to the primitive mind. 
Among the Greeks tabu is simply the Forbidden, the 
Thing Feared. 47 Breach of tabu meant defilement, 
until expiated with blood. It is just as vague, and no 
more definite, than the Unpardonable Sin to the sin- 
ner who thinks he has committed it, knowing not what 
it is. Among the Boloki, to break the tabu was to 
bring a curse, or even death to the breaker. 48 Hebrew 
tradition makes no mention of any specific unpardon- 
able offence ; but in their complicated system of tabus, 
purification was demanded even by a trifling breach. 
All these tabus mingle, in a manner extremely sug- 
gestive, the idea of holiness with that of danger. 49 

No doubt the Fear, inherent in the aboriginal tabu, 
has remained inherent in this later conception, out of 
which all the specific cause for Fear had vanished long 
ago. In sacredness, potency, vagueness, and fatal 
mysteriousness, the Unpardonable Sin is to the modern 
confessant what the breach of tabu is to the Congo 
savage, nor is it lacking in that sense of infection, 
which served to heighten in both instances the 
wretchedness of the sinner. Fear is the main constit- 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 479 

uent of all survivals; and where this Fear becomes 
active, its malignant influence over some young life 
is preserved for us in numberless volumes of pious 
autobiography. 

Striking as it seems, this particular instance is but 
a side-issue in the main psychological conflict. That 
such conflict is universal, that all men pass within 
danger of it, that youth itself is inextricably bound 
up with the forces which produce it, — is the fact suffi- 
cient to confirm any theory of its innate, primordial 
origin. 

The reader may impatiently retort that this is not 
what he means by religion. Many persons strongly 
object to being linked with the Bunyans or the Teresas 
of this world. They would insist that the religious 
experience, due to an individual revival of savage 
animism, is not the only sense in which we use that 
term. True; and yet little has been accomplished 
by the present investigation unless it has made plain 
that the current terms used in treating this subject 
are far too loose for our current knowledge of it to 
admit. If the emotional religious experience be truly 
the result of a revival of savage animism ; then one of 
the questions asked at the outset of this study has 
been in a measure determined. The mystical states 
which form the essence of this experience are not 
merely intensified states of intellectual opinion and 
belief. Their genesis is other, their evolution is other. 
That high seriousness respecting life and its duties, 
which to some — to many — of us to-day constitutes 
vital religion, is not the product of animistic survivals. 



480 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

May it not even be said to oppose their growth? 
Such feelings, such standards, surely interfere with, 
and impede emotional revivals, because they belong 
to the fabric of civilization which has covered and 
changed the primitive man in his nakedness. They 
spring from what we have made of ourselves; not 
from what we were made. The sources of this high 
seriousness are intellectual, and so far as it is possi- 
ble to tell, they appear to be directly antagonistic to 
the development of emotional experience. The whole 
body of intellectual and abstract conceptions has been 
introduced much later into the scheme of man's evo- 
lution. 50 If classification be made easier thereby, our 
intellectualized beliefs may be placed in this late 
period; while the emotional experience goes back to 
that original. These are the twin streams which have 
fed and fertilized the soil of man 's religious life ; and 
once we see these currents as two, we readily agree with 
the psychologist * ' that the word religion cannot stand 
for any single principle or essence," 51 but that it 
must be used as a collective term. Moreover, the di- 
rect testimony of the data at hand confirms this view. 
Manifestations so conflicting, so contradictory, must 
needs have more than one source. That man who is 
habitually guided by his intellect will suffer partially, 
or transiently, or not at all from any animistic re- 
vival. For this reason he is apt to deny its existence, 
or to scorn it as pathological if he admit it at all. 
That man, on the other hand, who is habitually guided 
by feeling and imagination, will undergo, while in the 
grasp of this revival, passions so furious, terrors so 
intense, joys so exalted and transcending, that he will 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 481 

look upon the doubter of these experiences as either 
a dullard or a madman. 

Should it occur to these subjects that both may be 
religious, then they frequently rush to the conclusion 
that both are affected by the same force, differing 
only in its degree of intensity. Each would resent 
the imputation that he is any less religious than the 
other; each would exclude the other, if he could, 
from the realm of religion; failing this, their only 
refuge has been a destructive latitudinarianism. Dif- 
ferentiation of terms is the first and the most nec- 
essary step toward clearing up these obscurities. 
Method and classification should be the second, though 
even more important. Method will reach the infer- 
ence that the so-called religious instinct cannot be held 
as singly responsible for all the various and complex 
manifestations hitherto grouped under this one head. 
If it be the cause of one type of phenomena, then it 
is precluded from being responsible for the other, — 
and vice versa. If by religion there be meant a group 
of experiences and resultant phenomena having their 
origin in animistic revival, — such as form the material 
of the present study, — then the experience running 
counter to these may not be called religion. 

The time has come to bring the reader face to face 
with the questions asked in the Introduction, and to 
decide whether this examination has in any way helped 
him to resolve them. The survey at least should have 
enabled him to discriminate more successfully between 
the various forms of data. ' ' An autobiography, ' ' says 
Emerson, " should be a book of answers from one in- 



482 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

dividual to the many questions of the time ' ' ; 52 and 
when a fellow-creature, in the pages of a confession, 
tells of the forces which create, and of the forces which 
destroy, the reader knows which of them are physical, 
and what they mean, which are mystical, and what 
they mean, which are literary and social, and what 
they also mean. Instincts, thoughts, and emotions are 
laid bare to him ; he is no longer deceived by individ- 
ual variation, nor by misinterpreted observation. His 
recognition and comprehension of the different factors 
will be rapid and complete. 

And with understanding will come a greater toler- 
ance, — one might even say a greater reverence. No 
longer will he place everything which is not his ideal 
of health sweepingly in the realm of disease. Neither 
will he longer conceive that his God is a God despising 
the divine medium of natural law. When he comes to 
feel and to perceive this law, moving to its fulfil- 
ment in his own obscurest processes exactly as it moves 
throughout the universe, shaping worlds out of 
nebuhe, — then the frantic running to-and-fro of little 
men, shouting their jargon of judgment and revela- 
tion, upholding or condemning one another, will no 
longer even make him angry. "We will not attack 
you as Voltaire did," he will exclaim in the famous 
words of Morley; "we will not exterminate you, we 
shall explain you. History will place your dogma in 
its class, above or below a hundred competing dogmas, 
exactly as the naturalist classifies his S|3ecies. From 
being a conviction it will sink to a curiosity ; from be- 
ing the guide to millions of human lives it will dwindle 
down to a chapter in a book. ' ' 53 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 483 

If lie desire to formulate a reply to the searching 
queries of science, the data of the confessant have 
furnished him with the means of meeting them on 
new ground, and with fresh suggestions. He now 
sees and can describe the manifestations in the in- 
dividual of the force which is known as religion. He 
recognizes it by the uniformity and universality of 
its symptoms; — he concludes that this very uniform- 
ity and universality are our strongest witnesses 
to its reality; the evidence can almost be made to 
prove itself. A steady recurrence of the same indica- 
tions, under different conditions of time and place and 
nationality, is proof sufficient of their foundation in 
an actual process. 54 

Just as we recognize through its typical effects the 
presence of the force called electricity, so we recognize 
by its typical effects the presence of the emotional re- 
ligious experience. But when we seek its further 
relations, in order to complete our induction, we are 
checked by the confused voices of philosophy dis- 
puting on the question of definition. Turning to 
science, therefore, it has seemed as though the work of 
the anthropologist came nearest to providing us with 
vital comparisons and suggestions. Our conclusion 
that the "experiences" of the type herein classified 
are due to animistic revival, acting counter to the later- 
developed intellectual and social elements of Person- 
ality, with a result temporarily or permanently dis- 
integrating, is a conclusion very far from the flattering 
theories of the mystical compromiser, at present so 
much in vogue. This conclusion contradicts such 
theories through the confessant 's own testimony, by 



484 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

showing that the peace, the joy, the reunion, are but 
the evanescent effects of psychological suggestion. 
The evidence proves that a conversion-crisis rarely es- 
tablishes Personality on any higher level than before, 
and that it is never without a reaction, during which 
the subject has to suffer further crises of doubt and 
gloom. The records show that whenever the conver- 
sion appears to be the means of opening new channels 
to the energy of the subject, it does so through his im- 
pulse toward work of some kind, or by bringing him 
into contact with some sectarian activity. If his reli- 
gious crisis leads him to take up teaching or preach- 
ing or organizing, then his level as an individual may 
truly be raised ; but such elevation cannot be called the 
effect of the conversion; it is rather the effect of the 
subsequent work. If the subject's emotional experi- 
ence does not lead him in the direction of new work 
(and there are many cases where it does not), then the 
last state of this man is infinitely worse than his 
first. 55 The reader will have become convinced that 
in most natures a religious conversion no more changes 
the original elements of good and evil in the subject 
than a wave changes the constituency of the water 
through which it moves. We have enveloped this 
crisis in a cloud of our own anthropomorphic beliefs : 
we have attached to it the idea of God, conquering the 
demon, entering into and calming the troubled soul. 
Man has affixed a religious significance to this age- 
long, evolutionary conflict, because only a religious 
significance seemed fitted to express its extraordinary 
poignancy. 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT; II 485 

Thus are we brought — if unwillingly — to that ulti- 
mate question; — one which will always be asked, and 
to which no answer, while men are what they are, 
can ever be accepted as final. Do we find in these 
experiences any proof of the religious instinct? For 
more than three thousand years, men have trembled 
and adored after this fashion; what should it prove 
to us to-day ? 

We have seen what it seemed to prove in the past. 
God's word was not, we remember, in the thunder, 
nor yet in the lightning; and we are now asking one 
another if it is in "the still, small voice/ ' Amid the 
clamor of contending theories, science knows only that 
she must walk austerely, that she must not assume a 
priori supernatural causes for natural, physical effects. 
If it is to animistic revival we are to look for proof of 
a religious instinct, then we must further differentiate 
the ideas dealing with non-anthropomorphic, ethical 
conceptions, which many of us include under the same 
head. These terms, after all, are but the symbols of 
the forces by whose aid man continues to evolve. We 
name and re-name them; in essence they remain the 
same. "Tous les symboles qui servent a dormer une 
forme au sentiment religieux sont incomplets, et leur 
sort est d'etre rejetes les uns apres les autres." 56 

As we reject these symbols the one after the other, 
instinctively we choose symbols of a higher character 
to succeed them; and to this instinct we may safely 
confide the evolution of our religious ideals. When 
men came to understand that visions and voices, ter- 
rors and trances, belong to their "ancient kindred," 



486 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

their lower, not their higher selves, then men were 
plagued by them no longer ; those symbols passed, and 
were rejected. 

For the work of the courageous rationalist — who to- 
day is the only idealist — is but begun. Three cen- 
turies ago, wise and good judges, under the grip of a 
savage survival, put their innocent fellow-men to 
a cruel death, on no evidence save that of raving hys- 
teria. 57 Less than a century since, and the incredi- 
bly grotesque and brutish conception of a personal 
Devil, was allowed to torment the sleep of little chil- 
dren and to insult the eternal face of things. It 
would be hard to find a single intelligent family sub- 
mitting to that horror to-day. Two hundred years 
ago, a callous, organized selfishness was preached as 
the highest life a person could live. To-day, no creed, 
no church, puts the career of passive egotism before 
that of active social service. It has slipped into its 
proper sphere, and the churches now give emphasis 
and precedence to the religious orders working for 
others. A hundred years hence, and we may confi- 
dently hope that the relation borne by the imaginings 
of the mystic to our life and ideals, shall be set into 
the same category as the demon-possession of the nuns 
of Louviers or Loudun. The symbols pass; they are 
rejected the one after the other. 

Whatever the religious symbols of the future, at 
least they will not be those of the past; they will not 
be founded on savage survivals. The religion they 
form will not permit its votaries to write, as did the 
honest Scot of a saintly philosopher, that "this atheist 
should have been rightly named Maledictus, and not 



THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II 487, 

Benedictus Spinoza !" 58 Religious doctrine will not 
be founded on horror, but on beauty ; not on fear, but 
on security; not on wild revelations to a few, but on 
hope and constructive ethics to the many. It will 
teach its followers, through science, how better to fight 
the battle with their brute selves. It will bid them 
shut their ears and ignore — as Luther ignored the 
Devil — all those mutterings of what they once were. 
We, who have hung, like Dante over the Inferno, un- 
til our ears shrink from the "high shrieks" and the 
"voices shrill and stifled"; we can but hope for, and 
believe in, the swift passing of our outworn symbols. 
No one who reads these records of suffering but feels 
his soul purged by pity and terror, — pity to see his 
fellow-man clinging to these rejected symbols, terror 
to see him struggling with the slime of the pit, and 
knowing not with what he strives ! 



THE END 



NOTES 



NOTES 

CHAPTER I 

1. Advancement of Learning, p. 78. 

2. G. B. Cutten, The Psychological Phenomena of Chris- 
tianity, p. 5. 

3. UEsprit des Lois, preface. 

4. E. Caird, The Evolution of Religion, p. 26. 

5. Ferrero, Characters and Events in Roman History, 
p. 33. 

6. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 3. 

7. Such as the Records of Friends, or Methodists, or 
Port-Royalists. 

8. Port-Royal, vol. vi, p. 245. 

9. Ernest Havet, Le Christianisme et ses Origines, vol. 
ii, p. 6. 

10. Cf. the intellectual freedom of Manu or of Confucius 
(in Sacred Books of the East) with such Christian 
writings as the Imitation of Christ. 

11. A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, Boston, 1909. 

12. E. Caird, Evolution of Religion, p. 2. 

13. Ibid., p. 89. 

14. Jevons, Introduction to the Study of Religion, p. 3. 

15. R. W. Emerson, Society and Solitude, "Books," p. 195. 

16. Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on JEtna. 

17. Philosophical Basis of Religion, p. 153. 

18. E. Delacroix, Etude sur Vhistoire du Mysticisme, p. 5. 

19. "Pour les ames profondes et reveuses, pour les intelli- 
gences dedicates et attentives." 

20. Cf. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. 

CHAPTER II 

1. Across the Plains (Pulvis et Umbra), p. 294. 

2. Budge, Book of the Dead, p. 190. 

3. Budge, Book of the Dead, Papyrus of Nu. 

491 



492 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

4. IMd., p. 35. 

5. Morris Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 
pp. 313-320; "confession during a special penitential 
season," p. 326. Sayce, Religion of Babylonia, p. 418. 

6. Westermarck, Origin of Moral Ideas, vol. i, p. 84. 

7. Sacred Books of the East, Buhler, Laws of Manu, xi, 
p. 229. Cf. Frazer, Taboo, pp. 214-215. 

8. Satapatha-Brahmana, Vedas, p. 397. 

9. Sacred Books of the East, Ibid, i, p. 261; cf. also the 
Kullavagga, xx, p. 122. 

10. Allan Menzies, History of Religion, p. 376. 

11. Epistle of James, v, 16. 

12. Allan Menzies, op. cit., p. 323. 

13. Plutarch, Apothegms, "On Lysander" (Bohn). 

14. "The Confessional is a Tribunal." Schieler-Heuser, 
Theory and Practice of the Confessional, 1906. 

15. Jewish Encyclopaedia, art., "Confession." 

16. F. C. Conybeare, Myth, Magic and Morals, p. 321. 

17. Proverbs, xxvm, 13; Acts, xix, 18; John, i, 19. 

18. H. C. Lea, History of Auricular Confession, vol. i, p. 8. 

19. Ibid., p. 14. 

20. Ibid., p. 19. 

21. F. C. Conybeare, Myth, Morals and Magic, p. 321; H. 
C. Lea, op. cit., p. 174. 

22. See Pere Duchesne, Histoire Ancienne de VEglise. 

23. H. C. Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 81, et seq. 

24. Ibid., p. 171. 

25. Ibid., pp. 173-75. 

26. Ibid., p. 11 (note). 

27. Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 277. 

28. S. Reinach, Orpheus, p. 290. 

29. H. C. Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 13. 

30. Ibid., p. 362. 

31. History of the Holy Mar-Ephrem, 378 a.d., in Syriac. 
See Schaffs Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. xiii, Ephraim 
Syrus. 

32. H. C. Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 362. 

33. Ibid., and also p. 171. 

34. Ibid., p. 207. 



NOTES 493 

35. Ibid., pp. 219-21; and see Epistle of James, v, 16. 

36. Testament of Ignatius Loyola, p. 42 (Burns and Oates). 

37. See Bibliography of Cases. 

38. Gorres, Mystique Divine, vol. n, pp. 176, 178. 

39. George Eliot, Romola, vol. I, p. 142. 

40. H. C. Lea, op. cit, vol. i, p. 347; "amara, festina, in- 
tegra, et frequens." 

41. See Cardan, Be Vita propria lioer. 

42. Schaff's Ante-Nicene Fathers (trans, by Rev. J. G. 
Pilkington, M.A.) ; Prolegomena. 

43. Confessions, book i, chaps, vi-x. 

44. Ibid., book n, chaps, n-x; chaps, x-xvn. 

45. Ibid., book ni, chap. i. 

46. Shelley's Letters. (Ingpen Collection.) 

47. Confessions (Pusey's translation), book x, chaps, xxxi- 
xxxvn. 

48. See Cardan, Bibliography of Cases. 

49. See Wilde, Bibliography of Cases. 

50. As books xi and xn. 

51. Confessions (Pusey), book v, p. 79. 

52. Oscar Wilde, Be Profundis, p. 110. 

53. Augustin's Confessions, book, x, chap. m. 

54. C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal. 

55. Ibid., p. 412. 

56. Lettere Familiari, rv, 1. 

57. Petrarch (Robinson and Rolfe), pp. 313 ff. 

58. Petrarch, op. cit., pp. 316-17. 

59. E. B. Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese. 

60. Petrarch, op. cit., p. 402. 

61. H. C. Lea, History of Auricular Confession, vol. I. 

62. It may profitably be noted, in this connection, that 
Luther's objection to confession was based on its 
tendency to found religion on Fear. Against this 
bondage he wrote his "Christian Liberty." Person- 
ally the practice aroused his contempt. "There was 

. such a running to confession — they were never satis- 
fied," he notes in his Table-Talk (Hazlitt), p. 161. 

63. Macbeth. 

64. W. Hirsch, Genius and Begeneration, p. 44. 



494 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

65. See H. C. Lea, op. cit. 

66. See Abelard, Cardan, in Bibliography of Cases. 

67. See A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, chap. n. 

68. See The Gadfly, by Mrs. Voynich; or The Silence of 
Dean Maitland, by Maxwell Grey. 

69. Confessions of an Opium-Eater, p. 114. 

70. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 
462-64. 

71. William James, Principles of Psychology, pp. 267-69; 
cf. F. Max Miiller, Science of Thought, pp. 29-84; 
551. 

72. See Bibliography of Cases. 

73. F. Max Miiller, op. cit., pp. 56-57; 85-86. 

74. Cf. such self-studies as Solomon Maimon's Auto- 
biography; De Quincey's Confessions; Rousseau's; and 
many others. 

75. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, p. 144. 

76. Ibid., p. 141 

77. Cf. A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, chap. n. 

78. By Marie Bashkirtsev, preface to her Memoires. 

79. Society and Solitude, p. 7. 

80. Essay on John Bunyan. 

81. See Bibliography of Cases. 

82. See Bibliography of Cases. 

83. See Bibliography of Cases. 

84. Shelley's Letters, Ingpen Collection, vol. i, p. 77. 

85. Morley's Life of Rousseau. 

86. S. Mechtildis, Liber Specialis Gratiw, in, 51. 

87. Born, 1462; died, 1525; see Symonds's Italian Renais- 
sance, vol. v, p. 461; see also Pietro Pomponazzi, by 
A. H. Douglas. 

88. London, 1910. 

89. Encyclopaedia Britannica, art., "Apologetics." 

90. Cf. Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. n, p. 102.' 

91. See also A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 331-34. 

92. Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum, secundi swculi. 

93. The first noteworthy apologist is named Quadratus, 
who lived and wrote under the reign of Hadrian. His 
work is lost, while that of his contemporary Aristides 



NOTES 495 

has been found and is edited by J. Rendal Harris. 
The attempt of both was to interest the emperor in 
Christianity. Later apologies, many of which remain 
to us, are those of Pamphilus, Justin Martyr, Rufinus, 
Jerome, Athenagoras of Athens, Theophilus of Anti- 
och, Melito of Sardis, Apollinaris of Hierapolis, 
Minucius Felix, Lactantius, and Tertullian. To these 
should be added the Contra Gentes of Athanasius, and 
the writings of Arnobius, Eusebius of Caesarea, and 
Cyril of Alexandria. Windelband, History of Phi- 
losophy, p. 353; E. Renan, UEglise Chretienne, p. 40; 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, art., "Apologetics"; also cf. 
Milman's History of Latin Christianity. 

94. Schaff's Nicene Fathers; Works of Jerome, Apologies 
i, n; Works of Rufinus, vol. vi. 

95. Jerome Works, Letter to Eustochium. 

96. Schaff, op. cit., vol. vi. 

97. Ibid., St. John Chrysostom. 

98. Schaff's Nicene and Ante-Nicene Fathers, op. cit. 
Works of Justin Martyr; Shepherd of Hernias, etc. 

99. Confessions (Pusey), books rv, v, x, etc. 

100. Iamblichus, Be Mysteriis; translated by Thomas Tay- 
lor. 

101. Works of Philo (Bohn), vol. n, pp. 50, and 388. 

102. It must not be forgotten, in reference to the above 
statement, that the meaning attached to the so-called 
Daemon of Socrates has not been exactly determined 
by scholars. While certain among them hold his 
remarks to refer to a tutelary genius, as Philo does, 
others believe Socrates to have been merely ironical; 
while others still hold the idea to have been the 
legendary contribution of his admirers. (Th. Gom- 
perz, Greek Thinkers, vol. n; cf. Grote, History of 
Greece, etc., vol. vi, pp. 99 et seq. Jowett's Plato, 
Apology 30, 40, et seq.) 

103. Schaff, op. cit., Life of Ephraim Syrus. 

104. St. Patrick, a.d., 469. 

105. Migne, Pat. Lat., t. 51; a.d. 463. 

106. Ibid., t. 59; a.d. 461. 



496 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

107. Ibid., t. 101. 

108. Ibid., t. 121; A.D. 869. 

109. Ibid., t. 121. 

110. Ibid. f t. 144, liber v, ep. 2 (a.d. 1000-1072) ; trans- 
lated by H. O. Taylor, in The Mediceval Mind, vol. i, 
pp. 265-66. 

111. Life of St. Anselm, by Rule. 

112. Chronique de 1047, in Guizot, Memoires pour servir. 

113. See Marcus Dod's Forerunners of Dante, for narra- 
tives of descent into hell. 

114. Historia Calamitatum. 

115. Tie de, par lui-meme (1053-1124). 

116. Migne, Pat. hat., t. 188. 

117. Ibid., t. 175; cf. also Joachim da Flore. 

118. H. O. Taylor, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 488-89. 

119. Known as St. Bonaventura. H. O. Taylor, op. cit. t 
vol. ii, pp. 413-14. 

120. Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 227. 

121. Berti, Giordano Bruno, Sua Vita e Sua Dottrina. 

122. Apologia di Lorenzino. (Raccolta di A. d'Ancona.) 

123. Apology for the Life of Colley Gibber (1757). 

124. Apologia pro Vita Sua. 

125. A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 332 ff. 

126. Lodge, Works of Alexander Hamilton, vol. vi, pp. 
456 ff. 

127. Pere Duchesne, Histoire Ancienne de UEglise, vol. I, 
p. 213. 

128. Cf. Barclay's Apology, in the case of the Society of 
Friends. 

129. A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 332 ff. 

CHAPTER III 

1. J. S. Mill, Inaugural Address, Works, vol. iv, p. 356. 

2. F. Max Miiller, Sacred Books of the East, Laws of 
Manu, 1, 11. 

3. Charmides (Jowett). 

4. Phwdrus (Jowett). 

5. See also Plato's introduction to the Dialogues. 



NOTES 497 

6. Alcibiades (Jowett). 

7. E. Havet, Le Christianisme et ses Origines, vol. i, p. 
211. 

8. Hierocles, commentary on the Carmina Aurea of 
Pythagoras. See Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and 
Dying, vol. n, p. 56. 

9. Marius the Epicurean, vol. n, p. 192. 

10. Windelband, History of Ancient Philosophy, p. 115. 

11. Fustel de Coulanges, La Cite Antique, p. 430. 

12. Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 92. 

13. Encycl. Brit., art., "Sophists"; Gomperz, Greek Think- 
ers, vol. i, pp. 45 ff. 

14. Gomperz, op. cit., p. 318. 

15. Primitive Culture, pp. 497 ff. 

16. Grote's defence will not have been forgotten, but mod- 
ern scholars seem to have reacted from it. History 
of Greece, vol. vr, chap. Lxvn, and p. 99. See also 
Encycl. Brit., art., "Sophists"; Gomperz, Greek Think- 
ers, pp. 453 ff.; Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 
90. 

17. A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, Boston, 1909. 

18. Auguste Comte, Philosophie Positive, p. 33 (trans, by 
Martineau). 

19. Ibid. 

20. Cf. J. G. Fichte, Science of Knowledge; F. W. Schel- 
ling, Transcendental Idealism; I. Kant, Dreams of a 
Ghost-Seer, etc. 

21. Scaramelli, S. J., Directorium Asceticum, vol. i, pp. 
334 ff.: cf. also H. C. Lea, History of Auricular Con- 
fession, vol. i, pp. 196-97. 

22. Benjamin minor, cap. lxxv (trans, by Edmund Gard- 
ner, in Dante and the Mystics, pp. 166-67). 

23. Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Dying, vol. n, pp. 
53 ff. 

24. Schaff, Nicene Fathers, Life of Ephraim. 

25. H. C. Lea, History of Auricular Confession, p. 185; 
also Scaramelli, Directorium Asceticum. 

26. Ibid., p. 185. 

27. Schaff, Nicene Fathers; St. Jerome's Letters, etc. 



498 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

28. E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i, pp. 497 ff. 

29. C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vol. n, p. 396; also, 
Pascal, by St. Cyres. 

30. D. G. Brinton, The Religious Sentiment, p. 81. 

31. Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 192. 

32. L. A. Seneca, Works and Life, by Justus Lipsius 
(trans, by Lodge). 

33. M. A. Antoninus, Meditations (trans, by Long), book i, 
17; book iv, 23. 

34. Epictetus, Discourses (trans, by Long), p. 81. 

35. Life of Plotinus; Works (trans, by Thomas Taylor), 
and Viti Plotini. 

36. Ibid., introduction to Life of Plotinus, by Porphyry. 

37. Iamblichus, Be Mysteriis (translated by Thomas Tay- 
lor) . 

38. Windelband, History of Philosophy, pp. 276-79. 

39. Otto Weininger, Sex and Character, p. 127. 

40. Schopenhauer, The World as Will. 

41. See also Morris Jastrow, The Liver as the Seat of the 
Soul. 

42. E. Caird, The Evolution of Religion, pp. 77 and 207. 

43. See Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ; and Mil- 
man's comment in History of Latin Christianity, vol. 
vin, p. 301. 

44. William James, Principles of Psychology, first two 
chapters. (For an explanation suited to laymen, see 
Thomson, Brains and Personality, p. 36.) 

45. Ibid., cf. also Encycl. Brit., "Broca" and "Aphasia." 

46. Ibid. 

47. H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, preface. 

48. A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 220-22. 

49. Jean-Paul Richter, Memoirs. 

50. Villa, Contemporary Psychology, p. 130. 

51. Windelband, History of Philosophy, pp. 304-07. 

52. See Edmund Gardner, Dante and the Mystics, pp. 173- 
74; translation of De Contemplatione, in Richard of 
St. Victor's Benjamin major, i, 5. 

53. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Dreams of a Ghost-Seer. 

54. Villa, Contemporary Psychology, p. 132. 



NOTES 499 

55. Cited by P. Bourget in the Preface to La Barricade. 

56. Villa, Contemporary Psychology, p. 165; also, William 
James, Principles of Psychology, p. 185. 

57. Morton Prince, in a Symposium on the Subconscious, 
pp. 92 and 95. 

58. Cf. J. G. Fichte (trans, by Rand). 

59. William James, Principles of Psychology, pp. 292, 
297. 

60. Villa, Contemporary Psychology, p. 266. 

61. E. Caird, Evolution of Religion, pp. 305-08. 

62. A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 81, 419, Appendix; 
(cf. idea denned and expressed by Herbert Spencer). 

63. G. J. Romanes, Diary, in 2 vols. 

64. R. Descartes, Discours de la Methode. 

65. A. d'Ancona, Raccolta di Autobiografle, Prefazione. 

66. Mention should be made of the psychological journal 
of Maine de Biran, who, influenced by the ideas of 
Condillac, endeavored, though unsuccessfully, to note 
his own mental processes. The attempt had its effect 
on later English minds and tenets. 

67. Descartes; born in 1596, in Touraine. 

68. Al-Ghazzali; born in 1058; died in 1111 a.d. 

69. Dominico Berti, Giordano Bruno; Sua Vita, e Sua 
Dottrina. 

70. Ibid., Constituto: "Io sono pronto a dar conto di me." 

71. L. Barbier de Meynard, Al-Gazali, Le Preservatif de 
VErreur. 

72. Ibid., op. cit. 

73. English translation by Claude Field, in the convenient 
little volume of the Wisdom of the East series, pp. 10- 
14. 

74. Ibid., op. cit., p. 18. 

75. R. Descartes, Discours de la Methode; Works, vol. 123. 

76. Discours, vol. i, p. 125. 

77. Ibid., vol. i, p. 130. 

78. Claude Field, Al-Ghazzali, p. 57. 

79. Descartes, Discours, p. 132. 

80. Ibid., pp. 139-40. 

81. Cf. A. H. Douglas, Pietro Pomponazzi. 



500 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

82. Windelband, History of Philosophy, pp. 344 ff. 

83. Born, 1462; died, 1524. 

84. A. H. Douglas, Pietro Pomponazzi, pp. 286 ff. 

85. A. H. Douglas, op. cit., p. 281. 

86. Ibid., pp. 74-75. 

87. Cf. also A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 360-65. 

88. R. Descartes, Discours, Works, vol. i, pp. 158-59. 

89. Ibid., p. 475. 

90. Windelband, History of Philosophy, pp. 437, 447 ff. 

91. J. J. Rousseau, Confessions, p. 1. 

92. See Caird, Philosophy of Kant. 

93. Cf. Dreams of a Ghost-Seer. 

94. Cf. Buchner, Kant's Educational Theory, pp. 230-34. 

95. Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 630. 

96. J. G. Fichte, Science of Knowledge (Rand's translation, 
p. 490; also chap, n, p. 10). 

97. Ibid., p. 502. 

98. J. G. Fichte, Destination of Man, p. 10. 

99. Ibid., p. 14 (condensed). 

100. F. W. Schelling, Transcendental Idealism. 

101. Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Tors- 
tellung. 

102. F. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo. 

103. Such as Wilhelm Krug, d. 1842; Soren Kierkegaard: 
(also Life of Krug, by G. Brandos), 1893. 

104. Burckhardt, History of the Italian Renaissance, vol. 
II, p. 36. 

105. Dante's Eleven Letters (Latham), Letter xi. 

106. Trans, by D. G. Rossetti. 

107. Petrarch (Robinson and Rolfe), p. 17. 

108. Ibid., trans, on pp. 59-60 ff. 

109. Four groups are published under the titles respec- 
tively of Lettere Familiari, Senili, Tarie and Sine 
Titulo. 

110. Let. Fam. xni, 7. 

111. Petrarch's Secret (trans, by W. H. Draper). 

112. Ibid., p. 192. 

113. Ibid., p. 14. 

114. Ibid., p. 18. 



NOTES 501 

115. Ibid., pp. 35-36. 

116. Ibid., pp. 84-85. 

117. Vita di Benvenuto Cellini, 1571. 

118. Vita di Girolamo Cardano, 1576. 

119. William Boulting, Eneas Sylvius, p. 91. 

120. Ibid., pp. 149-SV 

121. C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal. 

122. Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 362. 

123. Sir Thomas Browne. See Bibliography of Cases. 

124. See Bibliography of Cases, J. J. Rousseau. 

125. Confessions, vol. i. "Au moins je suis autre." 

126. John Morley, Rousseau, vol. n, p. 303. 

127. Jerome Cardan, died in 1576. (See A. R. Burr, The 
Autobiography, chap, vn.) 

128. See A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 29-30. 

129. Obermann, edited by George Sand, 1804. 

130. Ibid., p. 24. 

131. A. de Musset, La Confession d'un Enfant de Siecle. 

132. Life, by Moore, Journals and Memoranda. 

133. Byron, by John Morley, Miscellanies, vol. i. 

134. Life, by Thomas Moore, Works, vol. iv, p. 128. 

135. Ibid., pp. 270, 328. 

136. Ibid., p. 211. 

137. Letters of P. B. Shelley (Ingpen Collection). 

138. E. Caird, The Evolution of Religion, p. 352. 

139. The Browning Letters, vol. i, p. 43. 

140. Journals, vol. i, p. 360. 

141. Ibid., p. 79. 

142. Ibid., pp. 139-41. 

143. Ibid., p. 143. 

144. Ibid., pp. 361-68. 

145. Translated by Mary A. Ward. 

146. It appeared first in 1882. 

147. De Vita propria liber. 

148. Wenceslas, in La Cousine Bette. 

149. William James, Principles of Psychology, p. 185. 

r 150. The Chirneys of Earlham, by A. J. C. Hare, 2 vols. 

151. De Profundis, p. 63. 

152. Ibid., p. 11. 



502 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

153. IT>id., p. 38. 

154. La Cousine Bette. 

155. Be Profundis, p. 28. 

CHAPTER IV 

1. William Morris, The Earthly Paradise. 

2. See Augustin, Wesley, Calvin. 

3. See Bunyan, John Nelson, E. Swedenborg. 

4. See Gertrude More, Rolle of Hampole, Paul Lowengard. 

5. See Methodist cases; and H. Alline, J. Linsley. 

6. Cf. J. Trevor, Martin Luther, and others. 

7. Jesus. 

8. Buddha. 

9. Fox. 

10. Swedenborg. 

11. Jesus. 

12. Buddha. 

13. Paul. 

14. The Epistles of Paul; Martin Luther's Table-Talk and 
Letters. 

15. Wesley's Journal. 

16. See A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 171-83. 

17. By Gustave LeBon, in La Foule. 

18. C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, pp. 416-18. 

19. See Rousseau, M. Bashkirtsev, O. Wilde. 

20. Anatole France, Jeanne d'Arc, Appendix. 

v 21. Jackson's Lives of Early Methodist Preachers, Preface. 

22. Born in 1620. 

23. See Bibliography of Cases, John Bunyan. 

24. See Bibliography of Cases: George Shadford, M. Joyce, 
Thomas Olivers, John Pritchard, John Murlin, George 
Whitefield. 

25. See on this point Amelia M. Gummere, The Quaker. 
'> 26. See Bibliography of Cases, John Gratton. 

27. See Bibliography of Cases, Joseph Hoag. 

28. This is often denied: the reader is referred to the 
cases themselves. 

29. See Bibliography of Cases, George Fox. 



NOTES 503 

30. See Bibliography of Cases: Robert Wilkinson, Lorenzo 
Dow, Daniel Young, Thomas Ware. 
\31. Sampson Staniforth. 

32. Thomas Taylor. 

33. Mary Fletcher. 

34. Thomas Payne, 
v 35. John Haime. 

^36. Freeborn Garretson, Richard Rodda. 

37. See Bibliography of Cases. 

38. See John Wesley's Journal. 

39. See Jackson's Lives. 

40. See Jackson's Lives. 

41. Journal. 

42. See Bibliography of Cases. 
^,43. Works, vol. m. 

44. Riley, The Founder of Mormonism, pp. 39-40. 

45. Ibid., p. 45. 

46. Ibid., p. 46. 

47. See B. Brown, P. Pratt, Brigham Young, and his 
brother Lorenzo. 

48. Riley, The Founder of Mormonism, p. 177. 

49. Book of Mormon, pp. 588-90; Riley, op. cit., p. 166. 

50. Memoirs, p. 133. 

A 51. See The Qurneys of Earlham, vol. I, p. 333. 

52. Confessions, book ix. 

53. Hydriotaphia, p. 5. 

54. Henri-Frederic Amiel, Journal. 

55. Confessions : "I conceived that I should be too unhappy 
were I deprived of the embracements of a woman." 
(See also Eneas Sylvius, Letters.) 

56. Table-Talk (Hazlitt), p. 152. 

57. Confessions of an Opium-Eater, Preface. 

58. See Bibliography of Cases, narrative of George 
Miiller. 

59. A. Pope: Preface to his Collected Works. 

60. Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an Opium- 
Eater. 

61. For analysis see A. R. Burr, The Autobiography. 

62. Ibid. 



504 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

63. See Bibliography of Cases: Andre de Lorde, Preface. - 

64. See Confession of a Neurasthenic. 

65. In Nicholson's Phil. Journal, vol. 15 (Hibbert, Phi- 
losophy of Apparitions). 

66. Ibid., Hibbert, Philosophy of Apparitions, p. 95. 

67. A collection of modem relations of matters-of-fact con- 
cerning witches, edited by Justice Matthew Hale. 

68. De Vita propria liter. 

69. John Beaumont (1732), A Treatise of Spirits, p. 221. 

70. Cf. the experiences of J. G. Fleay, sent by him to 
Herbert Spencer, and quoted in Principles of Sociology, 
1, 2, Appendix. 

71. See A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, p. 7. 

72. Ibid. See Babbage. 

73. Ibid. J. A. Symonds, etc. 

74. Grasset, he Demi-fou, p. 257. 

75. See A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, p. 39. 

76. In Hibbert's Philosophy of Apparitions. 

77. Preface to Lettres a une Inconnue. 

78. By B. Caird, supra. 



CHAPTER V 

1. H. Delacroix, Etude sur Vhistoire du Mysticisme, p. x. 

2. See Edmund Gosse, Father and Son; H. Spencer, etc. 

3. The Three Tabernacles. 

4. Migne, Pat. Lat., t. 170, "Opusculum de conversione 
sua." 

5. Acta; Vita; Scivias seu Visiones (all in Migne); also 
P£re Chamonal, Vie de Ste. Hildegarde. 

6. Histoire de France, vol. vi, Introduction. 

7. H. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics. 

8. For this and following names see Bibliography of 
Cases. 

9. Curtis, Some Roads to Rome in America. 

10. Dr. Leuba gives a number of drunkards' conversions; 
and James quotes that of S. H. Hadley (Varieties of 
Religious Experience, p. 201). 



NOTES 305 

11. See A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 71, 72. 

12. Ibid., p. 49. 

13. See History and Practice of Thugs, London, 1851. 

14. See H. B. Irving, French Criminals in the Nineteenth 
Century, pp. 4-5. 

15. Ibid., p. 207. 

16. Bibliography of Cases, Public Ledger, Philadelphia. 

17. Newgate Calendar. 

18. Memoire. See Bibliography of Cases. 

19. Les Criminels peints par eux-mimes. Hesse, 1911. 

20. H. C. Lea, Chapters from Religious History of Spain, 
p. 381. 

21. Ibid., p. 344. 

22. Gesta Pontiflcium Leodeinsum (1616), and Gorres, 
Myst. Divine et Diabolique, vol. v, pp. 444-50. 

23. Myst. Divine et Diabolique, vol. v, p. 374. 

24. Cf. trial of Major Weir and his sister, in which both 
confessed to crimes that they could not possibly have 
committed. See George Sinclar, Satan's Invisible 
World Discovered, 1685. Both Weirs were evidently 
insane, but were put cruelly to death. 

25. Gorres, op. cit., pp. 136-55. 

26. Boisroger, La Pie'te Affligee, Rome, 1652; also Gorres, 
op. cit., vol. v, pp. 226-42. 

27. Gorres, op. cit., p. 256. 

28. Michelet, Histoire de France, vol. n, pp. 306-30; see 
also La Cadriere, by the same author. 

29. "L'homme de Dieu" in Lettre a Pere Attichy, 1635. 

30. Drs. Legue and La Tourette, La Possession de la Mere 
Jeanne. 

31. By even John Wesley; see Journal, vol. i. 

32. Table-Talk (Hazlitt), pp. 246-47. 

33. Ibid. 

34. Ibid., pp. 104, 263. 

35. Narrative of Surprising Conversions, Works, vol. m, 
pp. 233-40. 

36. See infra, "The Religious Instinct," chaps, ix and x. 
\ 37. P. Cartwright, Autobiography, pp. 48-50; see Bibli- 
ography of Cases. 



506 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

38. G. B. Cutten, The Psychological Phenomena of Chris- 
tianity, pp. 38-39. 



CHAPTER VI 

1. A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 250-51. 

2. Also of Th. Jouffroy as a case of "counter-conversion." 

3. See Bibliography of Cases: T. Haliburton, J. Newton, 
Frederick Smith, T. "Walsh, R. Williams, Carre de 
Montgeron, J. Lathrop, B. Bray, J. McAuley. 

4. Watson, The Philosophical Basis of Religion, p. 157. 

5. Ibid. 

6. G. LeBon, La Foule. 

7. Translated by G. C. Coulton, in A Medieval Garner. 

8. C. Pratt, Psychology of Religious Belief, p. 223. 

9. Francis Newman. 

10. Angela da Foligno. 

11. Mme. Guyon. 

12. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, p. 84, et seq. 

13. To these cases add Father Gratry, quoted by James 
in Varieties of Religious Experience. 

14. Cf. also Lacenaire. 

15. See Bibliography of Cases: James Naylor, Myles 
Halhead, Joanna Southcott. 

16. Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings, p. 234. 

17. Cf. pp. 395 ff. 

18. Jewish Encyclopedia, art., "Sin." 

19. Catholic Encyclopedia, art., "Holy Ghost." 

20. Martin Luther's views were the same as Augustin's 
(Table-Talk, Hazlitt, pp. Ill ff.). 

21. Matt, xn, 22-32; Mark in, 22-30; Luke xn, 10. 



CHAPTER VII 

1. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, p. 213. 

2. St. Cyres, Pascal, p. 193. 

3. Ibid., p. 225. 

4. Varieties of Religious Experience, chaps, ix, x. 



NOTES 507 

5. G. B. Cutten, Psychological Phenomena of Christianity, 
p. 252. 

6. Ante, "Introspection." 

7. W. H. Thomson, Brain and Personality, pp. 37-38. 

8. Boris Sidis, Suggestion, chap. 19. 

9. Cf. William James, Principles of Psychology ; see 
chaps, i, ii. 

10. Pratt, Psychology of Religious Belief, pp. 16, 17, 18. 

11. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 231-33. 

12. Boris Sidis, Psychology of Suggestion, p. 15. 

13. Ibid., p. 45. 

14. Ibid., p. 53. 

15. F. Galton, Memories of My Life, pp. 276-77. 

16. Cf. G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence. 

17. Pierre Janet, The Mental State of Hystericals, p. 153. 

18. Ibid., p. 202. 

19. See Bibliography of Cases: Ste.-Chantal, Angela da 
Foligno, etc. 

20. Janet, The Mental State of Hystericals, p. 276. 

21. Ibid., p. 527. 

22. Ibid., p. 128. 

23. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism. 

24. E. Brydges, Autobiography, vol. i, p. 390. 

25. Augustin. 
.26. Joseph Hoag. 

27. Freeborn Garretson. 

28. Jane Hoskins. 

29. Oliver Sansom. 

30. Jerry McAuley and John Furz. 

31. John Crook. 

32. Mary Fletcher. 

33. St. Paul. 

34. Colonel James Gardiner. 

35. Patrick. 

36. Elizabeth Ashbridge and Stephen Grellet. 

37. Osanna Andreasi. 

38. J. Hudson-Taylor. 

39. C. G. Finney, Gertrude of Eisleben, Baptiste Varani, 
S. Staniforth, Thomas Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, etc. 



508 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

40. Loyola, A. de Ratisbonne. 

41. Salimbene, Osanna Andreasi. 

42. Pascal, H. Alline, A. Braithwaite. 

43. Raoul Glaber, Othloh. 

44. B. Sidis, Psychology of Suggestion, p. 43. 

45. A. Comte, Philosophie Positive, Introduction, p. 37. 

46. See Bibliography of Cases for this and all following 
names. 

47. Peter Cartwright's experience is similar to that of 
S. H. Bradley (quoted by James, in Varieties of Re- 
ligious Experience, p. 261), who, aged fourteen, had a 
vision of the Saviour. Nine years later, after a re- 
vival-meeting, he has a violent attack of palpitations 
of the heart, during which he feels "a fresh influx of 
Divine love." 

48. Migne, t. 146 (trans, by Howland). 

49. Letter to Eustochium (Schaff; op. cit.). 

50. A non-autobiographical record in Hibbert, Philosophy 
of Apparitions. 

51. The authenticity of this Testamentum is in dispute. 

52. Cf. Dante, Paradiso, xxxm, 140: — 

"Se non che la mia mente fu percossa 

da un fulgore, in che sua voglia venne." 

53. Cf. the vision of a Raphael Madonna in full colors 
which appeared on his awakening to J. E. Fleay, and 
cf. also a "bright vision" of Christ, which Luther in- 
terpreted as an illusion of the Devil. 

54. F. von Hiigel, Mystical Element of Religion, vol. i, p. 
105. 

55. Acts, rx, xxn, xxvi. 

56. E. Renan, Les ApCtres, p. 181. 

57. Ibid., Introduction, pp. vi, vii. 

58. Acts xxn, xxvi. 

59. Hebrews ; , Ephesians; Timothy; Titus. 

60. E. Renan, Les Apdtres, pp. 170-71. 

61. 2 Cor. x, 10; xi, 30; and rv, 13. 

62. 2 Cor. xn, 1-7. 

63. See Bibliography of Cases. 



NOTES 509 

64. 1 Cor. in, 2; iv, 14; xm; 2 Cor. vii, 13, 16; x, 9. 

65. Cf. Augustin, Miiller, Loyola, etc. 

66. Acts xxvi, 14. 

67. E. Renan, Les Apotres, pp. 179-83. 

68. Cf. P. Cartwright, C. J. Finney, Othloh, H. Alline, J. 
Hoskins, Colonel Gardiner, etc., etc. 

69. Cf. Acts xxvi, with rx and xxn. 

70. E. Renan, Les Apotres, Introduction, p. xliv. 

71. The Acts of the Apostles in Greek and English, p. 337. 

72. Commentary on Acts, p. 169. 

73. Paul the Mystic, p. 55. 

74. Hibbert Lectures, "Paul," pp. 34-35. 

75. "Paul," p. 67. 

76. Ibid., p. 77. 

77. Commentary on the Acts (Gloag's trans.), p. 183. 

78. Paul. 

79. Acts, p. 347. 

80. Commentary on Acts. 

81. Life and Epistles of Paul. 

82. The Apostolic Age, p. 121. 

83. The Apostle Paul, pp. 63-67. 

84. The Acts. 

85. Ibid., p. 153. 

86. The Apostolic Age, p. 119. 

87. 1 Cor. ix, 1; Gal. i, 12. 

88. See Tylor, Primitive Culture. 

89. Cf. also Count Schouvaloff. 

90. Table-Talk (Hazlitt), p. 77. 

91. See Bibliography of Cases, also add the joy mentioned 
by Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and that of Stephen H. 
Bradley (both in James, Varieties of Religious Experi- 
ence). 

92. As, for instance, Ubertino da Casale, who calls Jesus 
his "brother." 

93. J. Edwards, Narrative of Surprising Conversions; 
Works, vol. m, p. 259. 

94. John Banks, Christopher Story, etc. 

95. Table-Talk (Hazlitt), p. 175. 

96. Augustin. 



510 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

N 97. Fox. 
98. Wesley. 

CHAPTER VIII 

1. Paradiso xxxiii, 46. 

2. History of Latin Christianity, vol. viii, p. 217. 

3. Milman, op. cit., vol. viii, p. 404. 

4. Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. ii, p. 45. 

5. Francis Thompson, Poems. 

6. Such as: F. von Hiigel, Mystical Element of Religion. 
E. Underhill, Mysticism. Rufus Jones, Studies in Mys- 
tical Religion. E. Lehmann, Mysticism in Heathen- 
dom and Christianity, etc. 

7. Dante and the Mystics, p. 26. 

8. Ibid., p. 29. 

9. E. Underhill, Mysticism, pp. 70-72. 
10. Milman, op. cit., vol. viii, p. 240. 

-•11. R. M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, p. xv. 
12. S. T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, vol. i, p. 307. 
— 13. R. M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, p. xxi. 

14. E. Underhill, Mysticism, pp. 62-63. 

15. These terms were apparently the invention of Dio- 
nysius the Areopagite. 

16. Urn-Burial, p. 71. 

— 17. W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 14-15. 

18. E. Underhill, Mysticism, pp. 70-71. 

19. F. von Hiigel, Mystical Element of Religion, vol. i, p. 
135. 

20. One might profitably compare the statement of Ben- 
jamin Brown, the Mormon elder, in his Testimonies for 
the Truth, that during a protracted camp-meeting his 
mind was so absorbed in Spiritual things, he ate or 
drank "scarcely anything" for a fortnight, during 
which the Lord sustained him. 

21. Cf. Paul. 

22. Thus there must be excluded from further use in 
these pages, the cases of the Catherines of Genoa and 
of Siena; MM. de' Pazzi, Bernard of Clairvaux, and 



NOTES 511 

Francis of Assisi. The legend by Thomas of Celano, 
exquisite as it is, cannot he serviceable here. 

23. Such are Pierre Janet, Grasset, Th. Ribot, E. Dela- 
croix, etc. 

24. E. Underhill, Mysticism, p. 57. 

25. Ibid., pp. 62-63. 

26. Ibid., p. 71. 

27. R. M. Jones, Studies in Christian Mysticism, p. 
xxxvi. 

28. 2 Cor. xn, 1-7. 

29. Delacroix, Etude sur VHistoire du Mysticisme. 

30. E. Lehmann, Mysticism in Heathendom and Christian- 
ity, pp. 232-33. 

31. E. Delacroix, Etude sur VHistoire du Mysticisme. 

32. There is a certain interest for us in the fact that 
whereas Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, started 
out by priding himself on his ignorance and illiteracy, 
just as did these earlier cases; yet, later, he claimed 
for himself all the knowledge in the world; said that 
he "could read Greek as fast as a horse could run"; 
knew Egyptian hieroglyphics, and so on. In other 
words, he felt it necessary to keep apace with his fol- 
lowers, who were not mediaeval disciples, but nine- 
teenth-century Americans. 

33. Lecky {European Morals, vol. n, pp. 114 ff.) points 
out the disfavor in which the ascetics held any in- 
tellectual occupation. 

34. Cf. Guibert, Jerome, Othloh. 

35. History of Latin Christianity, vol. vni, p. 301. 

36. E. Underhill, Mysticism, pp. 70-71. 

37. Ibid., pp. 72-73. 

38. F. von Hugel, Mystical Element of Religion, vol. n, 
p. 32. 

39. In Life, by Porphyry (trans, by Thomas Taylor). 
"MO. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 187-88. 

41. Table-Talk (Hazlitt), p. 4. 

42. In a letter to Can Grande. (See Latham, Dante's 
Eleven Letters, cited by Edmund Gardner, Dante and 
the Mystics, p. 32.) 



512 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

43. Translated by Edmund Gardner, op. cit., Ibid., pp. 178- 
79. Cf. Angela da Foligno, Book of Visions, pp. 36, 37, 
74, 98. 

44. Edmund Gardner, op. cit., pp. 158-59. 

45. Confessions (Pusey), book ix. 

46. Be Quantitate Animce, translated by Edmund Gardner, 
in Dante and the Mystics, p. 46. 

47. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, p. 318. 

48. Ibid., p. 324. 

49. See Bibliography of Cases, A. da Foligno. 

50. See Bibliography of Cases, Loyola. 

51. E. Underhill, Mysticism, p. 457. 

52. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics, vol. n, p. 357 (note). 
(Gives further the years of suffering before the ecstatic 
stage was reached, of certain other saints and hermits. 
These correspond to the data furnished under "Depres- 
sion.") 

53. E. Delacroix,^ Etude sur VHistoire du Mysticisme, p. 
181. 

54. Ibid., p. 391. 

55. Ibid., p. 325. 

56. Book of Visions and Instructions, p. 57. 

57. She died in 1896. 

58. History of the Inquisition in Spain, vol. iv, p. 6. 

59. Book of Visions and Instructions, p. 68. 

60. Riley, The Founder of Mormonism, p. 183. 

61. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, vol. vni, p. 
301. 

62. Lea, Chapters on the Religious History of Spain, pp. 
240-41. 

63. Ibid., "Mystics and Illuminati," p. 214. 

64. Ibid., pp. 215-16. 

65. Ibid., pp. 246-48. 

66. Ibid., pp. 309-17. 

67. Ibid., p. 426 (note). The one at Quesnoy la Conte, 
in Flanders, in 1491 lasted seven years. 

68. History of the Inquisition in Spain, vol. iv, pp. 4-6. 

69. H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. iv, pp. 
39-40. 



NOTES 513 

70. IMd., vol. iv, p. 80. 

71. H. C. Lea, Chapters from the Religious History of 
Spain, p. 227 (note). 

72. See S. Reinach, Orpheus, p. 390. 

73. Migne, Teresa, vol. hi, pp. 366-68. 

74. Migne, vol. iv, p. 496. 

75. See Maria d'Agreda, La Cite de Dieu. 

76. See Carlo da Sezze, Baptiste Varani, Marie de l'lncar- 
nation, etc. 

77. St. Augustin (Poujoulat). 

78. Sainte-Chantal, par l'abbe Bougaud. 2 vols. 

79. E. Gerard-Gailly, Bussy-RaMitin, p. 17. 

80. Henri Joly, Psychology of the Saints. 

81. E. Delacroix, latitude sur VHistoire du Mysticisme, p. 
13. 

82. IMd., pp. 348-49. 

83. For mediaeval narratives of descent into hell, the 
reader is referred to Marcus Dod's The Forerunners of 
Dante, where a list of them, with analyses, is given. 
Although many of them are written in the first per- 
son, they contain no important matter relating to the 
writer. 

84. Book of Visions and Instructions, p. 145. 

85. Primitive Culture, vol. i. 

86. IMd., vol. i, p. 307. 

87. Liber Specialis Gratis, i, 19 [translated by E. Gard- 
ner, in Dante and the Mystics, pp. 284 /f.]. 

88. Mystica Theologia, Prologus. 

89. See Bibliography of Cases. 

90. Cf. Renan Les Apotres Introduction. 

91. "Prison-Life as I found it." Century, September, 
1910, vol. lxxx, p. 1105: "Service was held every Sun- 
day, the Protestant and Catholic chaplains alternating, 
and was non-sectarian in character. It consisted of pray- 
ers, hymns, musical numbers, and a sermon, and was 
decidedly perfunctory. In fact, a prisoner who makes 
a parade of his religion is regarded with suspicion not 
only by his mates, but also by the officials. This is a 



514 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

natural result of many cases of insanity preceded by 
religious hysteria." 

92. The reader is referred to the History of the Mormons, 
by Linn, and also to Riley, The Founder of Mormonism. 
Here he will see that the attitude of the audience had 
a markedly deteriorating influence upon the character 
and the teachings of Joseph Smith. Whereas he had 
begun as a credulous, simple, and awestricken lad, he 
speedily degenerated into more sensational methods to 
impress and hold his followers. If they seem amaz- 
ingly credulous to us — they often seemed stiff-necked 
to him. 

93. E. Underhill, Mysticism, p. 69. 

94. Callaway, Religion of the Amazulu, p. 246 (cited by 
Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, p. 194). 

95. Ibid., p. 194. 

96. Narrative of Nicholas Perrot, in E. H. Blair's Indian 
Tribes, vol. i, pp. 50-51. Cf. also Alice H. Fletcher's 
Handbook of American Indians. 

97. Cited by D. E. Brinton, The Religious Sentiment, p. 
130. 

98. J. Beaumont, A Treatise of Spirits, p. 221. 

99. See Autobiography. 

100. See also A. R. Burr, The Autobiography, pp. 254-55, 
for further cases of non-religious conversion. Pe- 
trarch's change is intellectual, but as it was brought 
about by the influence of Augustin, it is probably to 
be termed religious: but it was "Amor" and not "La 
Grace" which caused Dante's heart to cry out, "Incipit 
Vita Nuova!" 

101. H. C. Lea, Chapters from the Religious History of 
Spain, p. 213. 

102. As we have already noted, they alternated with the 
most violent joys, and a self-complacency beyond all 
measure. 

103. Dr. Lea (History of the Inquisition, vol. n, p. 364) 
comments on the semi-Hindu asceticism "in the prac- 
tices of the Gottesfreunde, which drew them down to 
the level of the Indian Yogi." 



NOTES 515 

104. See Martin Luther's Table-Talk (Hazlitt), p. 104 
(anecdote already cited). 

105. Augustin, Confessions (Pusey), book x; cf. book rx. 

106. Cf. Bibliography of Cases. 

107. H. Maudsley, Natural Causes, p. 271 ff. Cf. with 
Joseph Smith's Vision of Moroni. 

108. Job rv, 12-17. 

109. Acts xxn, 10. 

110. Acts xxvi, 16, 17, 18. 

111. Linn, History of the Church, vol. i; Revelation i-vi. 

112. Narrative of the Great Revival, Works, vol. in, p. 
239. 

113. Ibid., p. 270. 

114. See Bibliography of Cases. 

115. See Bibliography of Cases. 

116. Contained chiefly in P. Janet, Mental State of Hysteri- 
cals; Grasset, he Demi-Fou; Binet-Sangle, Varietes des 
Types DCvot, etc. 

117. F. von Hiigel, The Mystical Element of Religion. 

118. W. Hirsch, Genius and Degeneration, p. 69. 



CHAPTER IX 

1. The Autobiography, p. 34. 

2. Francis B. Gummere, Democracy and Poetry, p. 284. 

3. Scholars estimate the date of Job variously, as from 
1000 to 400 years before Christ. The writer wishes it 
to be understood that she uses the following quota- 
tions in a literary sense. The fact that the consensus 
of modern opinion lends to Job a sceptical and protest- 
ant, rather than a pious, significance, does not alter its 
importance to the present enquiry. Nor does it much 
matter that the passages are differently distributed, 
and that the dramatis personal are not altogether what 
we used to think. 

4. Job xin, 3. 

5. Ibid., ix, 20, 21. 

6. Ibid., xlii, 3. 



516 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

7. Jevons, Introduction to the Study of Religion, pp. 
18-19. 

8. Comte, Philosophie Positive (Martineau's trans.) , p. 523. 

9. M. Maeterlinck, UOiseau Bleu, Acte in. 

10. Job xlii, 5-6. 

11. Be Profundis. 

12. W. Bagehot. Literary Studies, vol. n, p. 412. 

13. Matt, v, 20. 

14. Matt, xxm, 23. 

15. For the discussion of this question see Eduard Meyer, 
History of Antiquity, and E. Havet, Le Christianisme 
et ses Origines. 

16. Gaston Boissier, La Religion Romaine. 

17. Jesse B. Carter, Religious Life in Ancient Rome, 
chap. in. 

18. E. Renan, Les Apotres, p. 328. 

19. Notably by S. Dill, Roman Society; see also Jesse B. 
Carter, op. cit. 

20. 1 Cor. v, 1-7. 

21. Gal. in. 

22. J. B. Carter, Religious Life of Ancient Rome, p. 9. 

23. Ibid., pp. 72-73. 

24. Allan Menzies, History of Religion, p. 114. 

25. H. C. Lea, op. cit. 

26. A. Menzies, History of Religion, p. 323. 

27. Cf. Augustin, the St. Victors. 

28. HydriotapMa, p. 51. 

29. Natural History of Religion, Works, vol. ii, p. 397. 

30. A. Comte, Philosophie Positive (Martineau trans.), pp. 
26-27. 

31. Ibid., p. 27. 

32. A. Menzies, op. cit., p. 10. 

33. Such as Hartmann and Pfleiderer, q. v. 

34. Orpheus, pp. 2-3. 

35. Ibid., p. vii. 

36. By the work of J. G. Frazer, Herbert Spencer, and E. B. 
Tylor; supplemented by special monographs such as 
those of Franz Boas, A. E. Crawford, and others. 

37. Primitive Culture, vol. n, p. 180. 



NOTES 517 

v 38. See F. M. Davenport, Primitive Traits, pp. 20 and 32, 
for striking instances wherein the savage has bor- 
rowed from the Christian. 

39. Nicholas Perrot, Narrative of American Indians. ( See 
E. H. Blair's Indian Tribes, and Fletcher's Handbook 
of American Indians.) 

40. Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 410-12. 

41. N. W. Thomas, Natives of Australia, pp. 205-6. > 

42. A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-Speaking Peoples of the Gold- 
Coast, p. 150 (note). 

43. E. Doutte, Magie et Religion dans VAfriqUe du Nord, 
pp. 91-92. 

44. Klunzinger, Upper Egypt (cited by Maudsley, in Nat- 
ural Causes, p. 181). 

45. Primitive Culture, vol. n, p. 414. ("The Malay war- 
rior; the Zulu, and the Abipone of Hayti fast at in- 
tervals. A Hindu king, after three days' fast beheld 
Siva," etc.) 

46. 2 Sam. xxvm, 20-24. 

47. Encycl. Brit., art., "Asceticism." 

48. Schaff, vol. vi, letter cxxx. 

*- 49. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, p. 419. 

50. See Bibliography of Cases: Blair, Conran. 

51. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii, p. 418; also Herbert 
Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. i, Q, p. 239. 

52. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n. Cf. Othloh, R. Wil- 
liams, Colonel Gardiner. 

53. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. i, Q. pp. 146-48; 
vol. I, 2W, p. 789. 

54. J. B. Carter, Religious Life of Ancient Rome, p. 72. 

55. N. W. Thomas, Natives of Australia. 

56. E. Doutte, Magie et Religion, p. 396. 

57. P. Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 258. 

58. Codrington, The Melanesians, pp. 266 ff. Haddon, The 
Papuans, see Torres Straits Reports, vol. i, p. 252. 

59. Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 439; cf. Philo-Judseus; also 
Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals, notes same idea among 
the Boloki: among the Kaffirs who held the Soul was 
connected with their shadow, Dudley Kidd, The Essen- 
tial Kaffir, p. 83. 



518 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

60. Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 498-50. 

61. Gorres, Mystique Divine, vol. n, p. 139. 

62. 2 Cor. xh, 4. 

63. Book of Visions and Instructions, pp. 36-37, and 67. 

64. Letter xi (Latham) ; also cf. Angela da Foligno, Book 
of Visions and Instructions. 

65. Migne, Way of Mt. Carmel, (Euvres de Terese, vol. in. 

66. To show this tendency in operation the reader is re- 
ferred to the three narratives of Paul's conversion. 

67. P. Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, p. 103. 

68. See Bibliography of Cases: Jeanne des Anges, Raoul 
Glaber, Teresa, Mme. Guyon, etc. 

69. Wentz, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, pp. 354-56; 
also Wood-Martin, Elder Faiths of Ireland. 

70. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, p. 79 (note). 

71. Ibid., vol. H, p. 93. 

72. Primitive Culture, vol. n, p. 109. 

73. E. Doutte, Magie et Rel., pp. 338 ff . 

74. Ibid., p. 494. 

75. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, p. 138. 

76. Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 225; and A. B. Ellis, Ewe- 
Speaking Peoples, p. 21 ff.; Hose and McDougall, Pagan 
Tribes of Borneo. 

77. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 138 ff. 

78. Wentz, Fairy-Faith. 

79. Gorres, vol. n, p. 141. 

80. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 125 ff. 

81. See Hose and McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo. 

82. Codrington, p. 220. 

83. Primitive Culture, vol. n, 139. 

84. Doutte, Magie et Rel., p. 602. 

85. Lecky, Europ. Morals, vol. I, p. 381. 

86. Lea, Hist, of Inquis., vol. in, p. 381, names Origen, 
Gregory the Great, S. Equitius (who acted as an exor- 
cist), Cassarius of Heisterbach, and Thomas of Can- 
timpre, as sharing to the full the belief in demonology 
and its subsidiary beliefs. "The blessed Reichelm of 
Schongan, about 1270, claimed to behold crowds of 
spirits under numberless forms." 



NOTES 519 

87. It will not do to forget that the intellectual Wesley 
acted as exorcist on more than one occasion. (See 
Journal, i, Oct.) He expelled the demon from a con- 
vulsed young woman, who insisted that Satan "was let 
loose." 

88. I. W. Riley, The Founder of Mormonism, pp. 258-59. 

89. Ibid., p. 260. 

90. Cited by Riley, op. cit., p. 277 (note). 

91. Riley,. The Founder of Mormonism, p. 277. 

92. Ibid., p. 280; and p. 281. 

93. Tylor, Primitive Vulture, vol. n, p. 141 (note). 

94. Nevius, Demon Possession in China. 

95. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 130 ff.; 406 ff. For 
compacts with the Devil see Lea, History of the Inqui- 
sition in Spain, vol. iv, p. 205; also History of the 
Inquisition, vol. in, p. 424, wherein he notes such cov- 
enants made on little rolls of parchment and carried 
under the arm-pit. (Csesarius of Heisterbach.) 

96. J. B. Carter, Religious Life of Ancient Rome, pp. 12-13. 

97. See Bibliography of Cases: Bewley, Haliburton, Bos- 
ton, and Lobb. 

98. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, p. 130. 

99. Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 132-33; also cf. Hose and McDougall, 
The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, vol. n, chap. n. 

100. Maudsley, Natural Causes, p. 32. 

101. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. I, p. 453. 

102. Ibid., vol. n, p. 7. 

103. Adams, Curiosities of Superstition, p. 243; also Wood- 
Martin, Elder Faiths of Ireland, vol. i, p. 371, where he 
says that the wail of the banshee resembled the sound 
of an ^olian harp. 

104. Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 453. 

105. Hamlet, i, 1. 

106. Al-Koran, Sura cxiv, last verse. 

107. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 453 (note) : Dr. Lea 
cites the case of Vicente Herman, a hermit, tried be- 
fore the Inquisition who said that "Demons, with the 
voice of flies had been recalling his sins." {Inquisition 
in Spain, vol. rv, p. 71.) This "buzzing" was char- 
acteristic. Cf. J. G. Frazer, Taboo, p. 34. 



520 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

108. De Vita propria Liber. 

109. Jewish Encyclopaedia. 

110. Tylor, "Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 452. 

111. Isaiah xxix, 4. 

112. Isaiah vni, 19. 

113. See Bibliography of Cases. 

114. "Catarrhal otitis media." 

115. Ballinger, Diseases of the Ear, p. 735. 

116. Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. i, p. 436. 

117. A. E. Crawley, Idea of the Soul (in Wentz, Fairy- 
Faith, pp. 200-6; 239). Frazer, Taboo, pp. 26, 300. 

118. N. W. Thomas, Natives of Australia. 

119. Nansen, Eskimo Life, pp. 226-27. 

120. Cf. Wentz, op. cit., and Frazer, The Golden Bough, vol. 
n, p, 248. 

121. Ibid., p. 438; L. Hearn, Two Years in the French West 
Indies; Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i, pp. 450 ff.; 
Ill ff.; Wood-Martin, Elder Faiths of Ireland, vol. n, 
p. 296. The soul was like a butterfly or a moth. 
Frazer, Taboo, pp. 35-37. 

122. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 200 ff. 

123. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 186-90 ff. 

124. See Conversions of Pascal, Chingwauk the Algonquin, 
Catherine Wabose, J. Smith, Henry Alline. 

125. N. W. Thomas, Natives of Australia, p. 240. 

126. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, 
pp. -523 ff. 

127. Gorres, Mystique Divine, vol. n, chaps, xrv, xvi. 

128. Mystique Divine, vol. n, p. 5. 

129. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 149-52. 

130. Riley, The Founder of Mormonism, p. 188. 

131. Cf. Alphonse de Ratisbonne, Peter Favre, Loyola; and 
see the memoirs of George Sand and Edmund Gosse. 
Lea (Inquisition in Spain, vol. iv, p. 36) notes that 
beads, crosses, blessed medals, satisfied this great de- 
mand for the fetich. (Ibid., pp. 76, 204.) The Lab- 
arum of Constantine was a fetich. (Inquisition, vol. 
in, p. 394.) 



NOTES 521 

CHAPTER X 

1. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. 11, pp. 359 ff. 

2. Cf. Lecky, History of European Morals; Gregorovius, 
History of the Middle Ages; Hallam, A View of the 
State of Europe during the Middle Ages; the Works 
of Henry C. Lea, etc. 

3. Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 16. 

4. See Salimbene's Chronicle; and cf. the extravagances 
and immoralities of the Mormon revelation. 

5. Middle Ages, vol. n, pp. 492-93, 

6. Cf. F. M. Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Re- 
vival, p. 9, who notes the Southern Mountaineers and 
the Russians of the steppes; also see p. 64. 

7. Magie et Religion, p. 347. 

8. Primitive Culture, vol. I, pp. 138-39. 

9. Ibid., vol. i, pp. 136-37. 

10. loid., vol. i, p. 139. Cf. also, Michelet, La Sorciere. 

11. Cf. Nevius, Demon Possession in China. 

12. Read the confessions of Madeleine Bavent, Marie de 
Sains; the Salem trials; read Michelet, La Sorciere; 
and George Sinclar, Satan's Invisible World Discov- 
ered, containing the trials of Major Weir and his sister 
in Scotland, in the seventeenth century. 

13. A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking, and the Yoruba-speaking 
People of the Gold-Coast. 

14. W. Notestein, History of Witchcraft, p. 3; notes tradi- 
tions of cannibal feasts among the Irish before the 
fourteenth century. 

15. History of the Inquisition in Spain, vol. iv, p. 206. 

16. W. Notestein, History of Witchcraft, p. 3. 

17. Lea, History of the Inquisition in Spain, vol. rv, p. 
206. 

18. Ibid., p. 208. 

19. Michelet, in his wonderful chapter on "La Sorcellerie 
aux convents," thinks that the Sabbat was really the 
nocturnal revolt of him who was serf and vassal by 
day, and who by night dreamed of a perverse freedom 
{"liberte immonde"). But Michelet's dramatization of 
the Sabbat serves only to bring more vividly before 



522 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

our ideas and eyes, its primordial origins — its persist- 
ence as a survival. 

20. Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. ni, p. 408. (The 
earliest account is in 1337.) 

21. Ibid., p. 508. 

22. Ibid., p. 413. 

23. Gorres, op. cit., vol. n, pp. 226-42; and also cf. the un- 
fortunate Magdalena de la Palude, Michelet, Histoire 
de France, vol. n, pp. 309, 330-32; cf. also Davenport, 
Primitive Traits, p. 64. 

24. Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 483 ff. 

25. Riley, op. cit., p. 268. 

26. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 583 ff. 

27. Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 144. 

28. The Making of Religion, p. 150. 

29. The Golden Bough, Preface, p. viii. 

30. Les ApCtres, p. 16. 

31. Work, vol. ni, pp. 233 ff. 

32. Davenport, Primitive Traits, pp. 64, 20-32, 261. 

33. William Vaughn Moody, Poems. 

' 34. F. Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, p. 237. 

35. Primitive Culture, vol. n, pp. 144-45. 

36. A. C. Emmerich, Gertrude of Eisleben, Suso. 

37. See "Depression." 

38. Fanny Pittar, Jane Hoskins. 

39. Mme. Guyon, Blanco White. 

40. Salimbene, Angela da Foligno. 

41. Francis Newman. 

42. Sainte-Chantal. 

43. Migne, Terese, vol. in, p. 354. 

44. Migne, Terese, vol. iv, "Audi Filia, et Vide," cap. xcvn. 

45. History of Latin Christianity, vol. viii, p. 301. 

46. Says St. Jerome, "The duty of a monk is not to teach 
but to weep." Contra Vigilant, cap. xv. Melancholy 
is thus seen to have been regularly taught and advo- 
cated. 

47. Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 48. 

48. Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals, p. 298. 



NOTES 523 

49. Cf. J. Macmillan Brown, Maori and Polynesian, p. 79, 
who calls it "the plague of sacredness." J. G. Frazer, 
in Taboo, p. 214 and p. 219, strikingly upholds this 
idea when he writes of the "few old savage taboos 
which, masquerading as an expression of the divine 
will, . . . have maintained their credit long after the 
crude ideas out of which they sprang have been dis- 
carded by the progress of thought and knowledge." 

50. Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. i, pp. 
76-77. 

51. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 26. 

52. Journal, vol. vn (1847). 

53. Miscellanies, vol. I, p. 81. 

54. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. v, pp. 10 ff. 

55. Cf. Suso, Sainte-Chantal, M. M. Alacoque, James Lins- 
ley, etc. 

56. E. Renan, Les ApOtres, p. 384. 

57. Sir Matthew Hale. John Wesley cried out that "the 
giving-up of witchcraft is the giving-up of the Bible!" 
(Davenport, Primitive Traits, p. 141.) 

58. George Sinclar's Satan's Invisible World Discovered 
(1685). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CASES 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CASES 

A few cases in this list are marked "unread." This 
means that the writer has been unable, after four years of 
search, to find either the book itself, or an extract of suf- 
ficient length to use in her work. The titles are included, 
in case any reader should be more fortunate. 

The word "testimony" after a Quaker name refers to 
the collection of testimonies contained in the series called 
"Memorials of Departed Worth." 

The Methodist testimonials in the Arminian Magazine 
have been collected into Jackson's "Lives of the Early 
Methodist Preachers." 

Where the book is rare, the fact has been noted. 

Abelard, Piebbe, 1079-1172. "Historia Calamitatum," in a 
letter to a friend; "Lettres Completes," trad, de M. 
Greard. 

d'AcosTA, Ubiel, about 1623. "Exemplar Vitse Humanae." 
Limborch ed. trans. 

d'AGEEDA, Mabia, 1602-1665, Vie de; prefixed to "La 
Mystique Cite de Dieu." (See Gorres, "Mystique Divine," 
vol. i, pp. 303 ff.\ and Migne, "Encycl. Theologique," 
art., "Mysticisme," Preface.) 

Alacoqee, Mabgabet Maby, 1647-1690. Memoire, written 
for her director. 

Albinus, B. F. (seu Alcttinus), 804. "Confessio Fidei." 
(Doubtful.) Migne, Patrologia Latina, t. 101. 

Alexandeb, Maby, 1760-1808 (Quaker). Testimony of. 

Allen, John, 1737-1810. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 
minian Magazine.) 

Allies, Thomas W., 1837-1880. "A Life's Decision." 

Alline, Henry, Rev., 1748-1784 (Presbyterian). The Life 
and Journal of. 

527 



528 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Amiel, Henri-Fhederic, * 1821-1881. "Journal Intime." 
(Trans, by Mrs. Ward.) 

Andreasi, Osanna, 1449-1505. Personal Record. (In 
Gorres, "Mystique Divine," vol. i, p. 175.) 

Angela da Foligno, 1309. "Book of Visions and Instruc- 
tions" (taken down from her own lips by Brother Arnold, 
of the Friars Minor). 

Anonymous, "A Modern Pilgrim's Progress," n. d. Edited 
by Bowden. 

Anselm of Canterbury. "Oratio Meditativo," in contempo- 
rary biography by Eadmer (trans, in Rule's "Life"). 

Aenauld, AngElique, 1742. "Relation de la vie de la rev- 
erende Mere." (See Sainte-Beuve's "Port-Royal," pp. 
84 ft.) 

Ashbridge, Elizabeth, 1713-1755 (Quaker). "Some account 
of the Life of." 

Ashman, William, 1734-1818. (Methodist testimony in 
Arminian Magazine.) 

Augusttnus, Aurelius, 354-430. "Confessiones, Retrac- 
tiones and Epistolae," and "De Quantitate Animae." 
(Trans, by Pusey and Pilkington, in Schaff's "Nicene 
and Ante-Nicene Fathers.") 

Babbage, Charles, 1796-1864. "Passages from the Life of a 

Philosopher." 
Backus, Isaac, 1724-1806. Autobiography of. 
Bacon, Roger, 1292. Opus Tertium, Letter, or Apologia. 

(Translation of H. O. Taylor, in "The Mediaeval Mind.") 
Bangs, Benjamin, 1652. Quaker testimony. 
Banks, John, 1747-1810 (Quaker). Journal of. 
Bashkirtsev, Marie, 1860-1884. "Memoires; Journal d'un 

jeune Artiste." 
Bavent, Madeleine, 1642. Confession of. (In Boisroger "La 

Piete Affligee," Rome, 1652; also Gorres, vol. v, pp. 

226-42.) 
Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. "His Life and Times" 

(Ed. by Calamy). 
Beach, Charles Fisk, 1910 (Catholic). (In Curtis, "Some 

Roads to Rome in America.") 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 529 

Beaumont, John, 1732. "A Treatise of Spirits." 

Beechee, Henby Waed, 1813-1887 (Presbyterian). Auto- 
biographical Notes, in Life of, by his son. 

Bellaemin, Robeeto, Cardinal, 1542-1621. "Vita." (Ger- 
man trans., Dollinger.) 

Benson, Robeet Hugh, 1913 (Catholic). "Confessions of a 
Convert." 

Beekeley, Geoege, 1685-1753. "Principles of Human Knowl- 
edge." 

Beeteand, L. A., n. d. (Mormon). "Les Memoires d'un 
Mormon." [Unread.] 

Besant, Mes. Annie, 1847. An Autobiography. 
N Bewley, Geoege, 1684 (Quaker). "Narrative of the Chris- 
tian Experiences of." 

Black, William, 1760-1834. (Methodist testimony, in 
Arminian Magazine.) 

Blaib, Robeet, 1593-1666 (Presbyterian). Autobiography. 
(Unfinished.) 

Boehme, Jacob, 1574-1624. "Aurora." 

Bonaventuea, St. (John of Fidanza), 1221-1274. "Itiner- 
arium mentis in Deum." Opera Omnia, 3d ed.; also 
Edmund Gardner, "Dante and the Mystics." 

Bost, A. Memoires de. ( See James, "Varieties of Religious 
Experience.") [Unread.] 

Boston, Thomas, of Ettbick, 1676-1732 (Presbyterian). 
"Memorials of the Life of"; addressed to his children. 

Boueignon, Antoinette, 1616-1680. Works; "Vie In- 
terieure"; and "Life," by Poiret, containing an "Apologie." 
v Bownas, Samuel, 1676-1753 (Quaker). An account of. 

Bbadley, Stephen H., Conn., 1830. Sketch of the Life of. 
(Extracts, in James, "Varieties of Religious Experience.") 

Beaineed, David, 1718-1747 (Presbyterian). Autobiog- 
raphy. 
V Beaithwaite, Anna, 1788-1829 (Quaker). Journal. 

Beay, Chaeles, 1811-1884. "Phases of Opinion and Ex- 
perience." 

Beay, Billy, 1794-1868. Memoir of, called "The King's 
Son." 



530 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Bbigitte op Sweden, 1302-1373. Revelations. (Little Bol- 

landists; Guerin.) 
Bbown, Benjamin, 1853 (Mormon). "Testimonies for the 

Truth." 
Browne, Robert, 1550-1633 (Puritan). "A True and Short 

Declaration." (24 pp., rare: Lambeth Palace Collection.) 

See Dexter, "Congregationalism as seen in its Literature." 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 1605-1682. "Religio Medici: in a 

letter to a friend." 
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806-1861. Letters. 
Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600. Constitute di. (Domenico 

Berti, "Sua Vita e sua Dottrina.") 
Brysson, George, 1649-1714 (Presbyterian). Memoir; ed- 
ited by Dr. M'Crie. 
Bull, George H. (Catholic). (In Curtis, "Roads to Rome 

in America.") 
Bunyan, John, 1628-1688. "Grace Abounding to the Chief 

of Sinners." 
Butterworth, H. T. "Reminiscences and Memories, Ohio, 

1886." [Unread.] 
Byron, Lord, 1788-1824. Journals and Memoranda; also 

autobiographical material in "Letters and Life" of, by 

Moore, and E. C. Mayne. 

Cairns, Elizabeth, 1762. Memoir of, edited by J. Greig, 

Glasgow. (In Thomas Upham's "Interior Life," pp. 

100-2.) [Unread.] 
Calvin, John, 1509-1564. "Opuscula," in Opera Omnia. 
Capers, William, 1790-1855 (Methodist). Autobiography. 
Cardan, Jerome, 1501-1576. "De Vita propria Liber," in 

Opera. 
Carlo da Sezze, 1613-1670. Vita di, by P. M. A. di Vicenza, 

Venice, 1881. 
Carre de Montgeron, 1686-1754. Autobiographie, precedant 

Fouvrage intitule "La Verite des Miracles de M. de Paris." 

(In Mathieu, "1'Histoire des Miracul6es de St. MSdard." 

Paris, 1864.) 
Cartwright, Peter, 1785-1856 (Methodist). An autobiog* 

raphy of. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 531 

Cabvosso, William, 1750-1834 (Methodist). Autobiography. 
Casaubon, Isaac, 1559-1614. Diary of, called "Ephemer- 

ides." Clarendon Press. 
Castiglionchio, Lapo di, n. d. (Thirteenth century; Flor- 
entine.) 
Catherine of Bologna, 1463. Revelations (posthumous; in 

Little Bollandists; Guerin). 
Catherine of Genoa, 1447-1510. Conversion of, in Vita di. 

(See Von Hiigel, "Mystical Element of Religion.") 
Catheeine of Siena (Benincasa), 1347-1380. Letters of, 
edited by V. Scudder; and "Life," by Edmund Gardner. 
^Caton, William, n. d. (Quaker testimony.) 
Cellini Benvenuto, 1500-1571. Vita di. (See J. A. 
Symonds, trans.) 
N Chalkley, Thomas, 1675-1739 (Quaker). Journal of. 
Chantal, Jeanne F. Fremyot de, 1572-1641. "Histoire de," 

par l'abbe Bougaud. 
Charles, Henri. Memorial of, with confession. (In H. B. 
Irving, "French Criminals of the 19th Century," p. 210.) 
K Churchman, John, 1705-1775 (Quaker). Life of. 
Cibber, Collet, 1671-1757. "Apology for the Life of." 
Clarke, James Freeman, 1810. Autobiography. 
Coleman, Caryl (Catholic conversion). (In Curtis, "Some 
Roads to Rome in America." 1910.) 
\ Collins, Elizabeth, 1755-1831. (Quaker testimony.) 
^Conran, John, 1739-1827. (Quaker testimony.) 
Copus, J. E. (Catholic conversion). (In Curtis, "Some 

Roads to Rome in America." 1910.) 
Cornaby, Hannah (Mormon). Autobiography. 
- Crisp, Stephen, 1692 (Quaker). "A Journal of the Life of." 
v Croker, John, 1673. (Quaker testimony.) 
Crook, John, about 1654 (Quaker). "A Short History of 
the Life of." Rare. 
*" Crowley, Ann, 1826. (Quaker testimony.) 
Cruden, Alexander. "Autobiography of Alexander the Cor- 
rector." Scots, 18th century; rare. (Prefixed to first 
ed. of Concordance.) [Unread.] 
Cusinas, Francois de, 1863. Brussels. "Memoire," edited 
by Campan. [Unread.] 



532 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Dante Ali©hieri, 1265-1321. Letter to Can Grande. (Lath- 
am's trans., entitled "Dante's Eleven Letters.") 

David, Christian, 1738 (Moravian). Wesley's "Journal," 
vol. i, pp. 120-22. 
% - Davtes, Richard, 1685-1707 (Quaker). "An Account of the 
Convincements, Services, Exercises, and Travels of." 

Davy, Sir Humphry, 1778-1829. "On the Effects of Nitrous 
Oxide Gas," in "Fragmentary Remains." 

Deleloe, Jeanne de St. Matheeu, 1604-1660. "Une Mystique 
Inconnue du 17e Siecle"; Dom Bruno Destree, O. S. B. 

Derby, Haskett, M.D. (Catholic conversion.) (In Curtis, 
"Some Roads to Rome in America.") 

Descartes, Rene, 1596-1650. "Discours de la Methode pour 
bien conduire sa Raison"; also, "Meditations"; in CEuvres 
completes. 

Dewey, Orville, 1794-1882. Autobiography. 
** Dickinson, James, 1659-about 1700. (Quaker testimony.) 

Dickinson, Peard, 1758-1802. (Methodist testimony in the 
Arminian Magazine.) 

Dow, Lorenzo, 1777 (Methodist). "Life of." 
s Dudley, Mary, 1750-1810. (Quaker testimony.) 

Dunton, John, 1659-1733. "The Life and Errors of." 

Ebnerin, Margaret, 1351. Vie et Journal de. (See Gorres, 
vol. n, p. 207.) 
_ Edmundson, Wm., 1627-1712 (Quaker). Journal of the 
Life of. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 1703-1758 (Presbyterian). Diary, 
Resolutions and Conversion of. Complete Works. Wor- 
cester ed. 

Edwards, Mrs. Jonathan, "The Mystery of Pain and 
Death." London, 1892. (See James, "Varieties of Re- 
ligious Experience," p. 276.) [Unread.] 

Eliphaz the Temanite, about b.c. 400. (In the Book of 
Job rv, 12-17.) 

Elizabeth of Schonau, 1129-1165. "Revelations." (In 
Migne, "Pat. Lat.," t. 195.) 
xEllwood, Thomas, 1639-1713 (Quaker). The Life of. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882. Journals, in 10 vols. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 533 

Emmebich, Anne-Catheeine, 1774-1824. "Vie et Visions 

de"; R-P Fr. J. A. Duley. 
Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, 1405-1464. Commentaries and 

Letters. (Boulting's "Pope Pius II.") 
Ephbaim Syeus, of Edessa, 368. "Testamentum et Con- 

fessiones," in Syriac (disputed). (Life of, in Schaff, 

"Ante-Nicene Fathers.") 
Eudes, John, Blessed, 1601-1680. "Memoriale Beneficiorum 

Dei." (In "Life" of, by Fr. Russell.) 
Evans, William, 1787. (Quaker testimony.) 

Faiebanks, Hieam F. (Catholic conversion). (In Curtis, 
"Some Roads to Rome," etc.) 

Favee, Petee, Blessed, 1506-1546. "Memoriale," and Spirit- 
ual diary. (Trans, in Quarterly series.) 

Feey, Jeanne, 1559-1586. Confession of. (See Gorres, vol. 
v, pp. 136-55.) 

Fichte, J. G., 1762-1814. "The Science of Knowledge," and 
the "Destination of Man." (Rand.) 

Fielding, Henby, 1904. "Hearts of Men." 

Finney, Chaeles G., 1792-1875. (Presbyterian.) "Memoirs 
of." 

Fleay, J. G., Experiences of. (In Herbert Spencer, "Prin- 
ciples of Sociology," vol. i, Part n, p. 787.) 

Flechebe, J. de la (otherwise Fletcher), 1729-1785 
(Methodist). Autobiography. 

Fletcheb, Maby, 1739-1815. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 

minian Magazine.) 
■ Follows, Ruth, 1738-1819. (Quaker testimony.) 

Fontaine, J. de la, 1658. (Huguenot memoirs.) 
^Fothebghl, John, 1676. (Quaker testimony.) 

Foubnieb, Fbancoise, 1685. "Vie de la mere." [Unread.] 

Fox, Geoege, 1624-1691 (Quaker). "A journal, or historical 
account of." 

Fbancoise Romaine, St., 1384-1440. Visions, in "Vita," by 
J. Mattioti. (Guerin.) 

Fbancke, Augustus Hebman, 1660-1727. Memoir; trans, 
from German. 

Fbaseb of Beae, James, 1639-1700. (Presbyterian.) 



534 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Memoirs of the Life of. (Tweedie, Wodrow Society Pub- 
lications.) 
Feoude, Richard Hurrell, 1803-1836. "Remains of." 
Fullerton, Lady Georgiana, 1812-1885. "The Inner Life" 

of. (In memoir.) 
Furz, John, 1717-1800. (Methodist testimony in Arminian 
Magazine.) 

Gardiner, Colonel. Conversion, n. d. (In Scott, "Waver- 
ley," vol. i, p. 72, and in Hibbert, "Philosophy of Appar- 
itions.") 
* Gardiner, Dr. Wm., n. d. (Quaker). Journal. 

Garretson, Freeborn, 1752-1827. (Methodist testimony.) 

Gates, Theophilus, W., 1786. "Trials and Experiences of." 

Al-Ghazzali, 1056-1111. "Munquidh min ad dalal." (Trans, 
into French by Barbier de Meynard, as "Le Preservatif 
de l'Erreur"; also into English as "Apology," by Claud 
Field, Wisdom of the East Series. See Amer. Oriental 
Soc, vol. 20, p. 71; and Journal Asiatique, 7e serie, t. ix, 
Macdonald.) 

Gertrude of Eisleben, 1263-1334. The Revelations of St. 
("Legatus Divinse Pietatis," book il). Dates doubtful. 

Giuliani, Veronique, 1660-1727. Vie de, edited by M. Sal- 
vatori, Rome, 1803. (See Gorres, vol. n, pp. 190-93.) 

Glaberus, Rodolphus (Raoul Glaber), 1047. Chronica. 
(Trans, by Guizot, "Memoires pour Servir," T. v.) 

Gordon, Alexander, 1789 (Presbyterian). Autobiography. 

Gosse, Edmund, 1908. "Father and Son." Biographical 
Recollections. 

Gotteschalchus, 870. "Confessio," and "Confessio pro- 
lixior"; Migne, "Pat. Lat." t. 121. 
\ Gough, James, 1712 (Quaker). Memoirs of. 

Gough, John B., 1817. Autobiography. 

Gradin, Arvtd, n. d. (Moravian). (In Wesley's "Journal," 
vol. i, pp. 120-22.) 

Gratry, Pere A., 1880. "Souvenirs de ma Jeunesse." (See 
James, "Varieties of Religious Experience," pp. 146, 476, 
506.) 
^Gratton, John, 1643-1712. (Quaker testimony.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 535 

Gbeen, Ashbel, 1762-1848 (Presbyterian). Life of. 
v Gbellet, Stephen, 1773. (Quaker testimony.) 
Griffith, John, 1713-1776. (Quaker testimony.) 
Guibebt de Nogent, 1053-1124. Vie de, par lui-meme. 
(In "Histoire des Croisades.") 
t Gubneys of Eablham, The. By A. J. C. Hare. 
Guyon, Jeanne de la Mothe, 1648-1717. Vie de, par elle- 
meme. (Eng. trans.) 

Hadley, S. H. Conversion of (no date nor title). (See 
James, "Varieties," etc., pp. 201-03.) 
v Haggeb, Maby, 1768-1840. (Quaker testimony.) 

Haime, John, 1710-1734. (Methodist testimony in Armin- 
ian Magazine.) 

Halhead, Myles, 1690 (Quaker). "A book of some of the 
sufferings and passages of ... as also concerning his 
labour and Travel in the work of the Lord." (Rare 
tract; Roberts' Collection; Haverford College.) 

Halibubton, Thomas, 1674-1711 (Presbyterian). Auto- 
biography and Diary, in Life. 
- Hall, David, 1683. (Quaker testimony.) 

Hall, Joseph, Bishop of Exeter and Norwich, 1574-1656. 
"Observations of some specialties of Divine Providence." 

Hamilton, Alexandeb, 1757-1804. "Reynolds Pamphlet." 
(In Works, Lodge; vol. vn.) 

Hamon, Pebe. "Relation de plusieurs circonstances de la 
vie de, faites par lui-meme dans le gout de St. Augus- 
tin . . ." 1734. (See Sainte-Beuve "Port-Royal," vol. iv, 
p. 288.) [Unread.] 

Hanby, Thomas, 1733-1796. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 
minian Magazine.) 

Hanson, Thomas, 1783-1804. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 
minian Magazine.) 
\ Habe, A. J. C, 1834-1900. "The Story of my Life." 

Habbison, Fbedebic, 1831. "Memories and Thoughts"; also 
"Apologia pro fide mea." 

Haslett, William, 1766-1821 (Presbyterian). Letter, in 
Life of. 
* Hayes, Alice, 1657-1720 (Quaker). A short account of. 



536 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Hermannus, 1124 (Abbot) Tuitensis; "Opusculum de con- 
versione sua." (Migne, "Pat. Lat." t. 170.) 

Heywood, Olivee, 1630-1702 (Presbyterian). Memoirs of, 
by Slate. 

Hibbakd, B., 1771 (Methodist). Life. 

Hickman, William, 1815 (Mormon). "Confessions and Dis- 
closures." 

Hildegabde of Bingen, St., 1098-1178. "Acta; Vita; 
Scivias seu Visiones." (Migne, "Pat. Lat." t. 197; also, 
Vie de; Chamonal.) 
% Hoag, Joseph, 1762-1846 (Quaker). Memoirs of. 

Hopkins, Samuel, 1728-1803. Autobiography. 

Hopper, Christopher, 1722-1802. (Methodist testimony.) 

Hornsby, Nicholas L. (Catholic conversion.) (In "Some 
Roads to Rome in America.") 
v Hoskins, Jane, 1693. (Quaker testimony.) 
"* Howgill, Francis, 1618-1668 (Quaker). Memoirs of. 

Hudson-Taylor, J., n. d. Sketch; called "A Retrospect." 
* Hull, Henry, 1765-1834 (Quaker). Memoirs of. 

Hunter, William, 1728-1797. (Methodist testimony in 
Arminian Magazine.) 

Iamblichus, 330. "De mysteriis"; trans. Thomas Taylor. 

Ivan the Terrible, 1530-1584. Confession of (in two Let- 
ters, addressed to the Monastery of Louzdal. Russian 
Archives ) . [ Unread. ] 

Jackson, William, 1794-1834 (Methodist). "A Man of 
Sorrows; or the Providence of God displayed." 

Jaco, Peter, 1729-1781 (Methodist). A Letter to Wesley 
(in Arminian Magazine). 
v Jaffray, Alexander, 1614-1673 (Quaker). Diary, etc.; ed. 
by Barclay. 

James, John Angell, 1785-1840. Autobiography of. 

Jarratt, Devereux, 1732-1800. Autobiography of. 
% Jay, Allen, n. d. (Quaker). Autobiography of. 

Jeanne des Anges, 1602-1665. "La Possession de la m£re," 
par Drs. G. LSgue et G. de la Tourette; preface de Char- 
cot; Paris, 1886. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 537 

Jeffebies, Richard, 1883. "The Story of my Heart." 
* Jeffeeis, Edith, 1811-1843. (Quaker testimony.) 

Jerome, St., 345-420. Autobiographical details in "Let- 
ters" and "Apologies"; also conversion, in Letter xxh, 
to Eustochium. (Schaff's "Ante-Nicene Fathers," vol. 
vi.) 

John of Salisbury, 1181. "Metalogicus." (In Migne, "Pat. 
Lat," t. 199.) 

Jones, Peter, 1802-1860 (Methodist). Autobiography of. 
'^Jordan, Richard, 1765-1827. (Quaker testimony.) 

Jouffroy, Th., 1796-1842. Experiences of. (In "Nouveaux 
melanges philosophiques," p. 83.) 

Joyce, Matthias, 1754-1814. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 
minian Magazine.) 

Juliana of Norwich, 1373. Revelations to Mother. (Tick- 
nor & Fields, 1864.) 

Justin Martyr, 167. "Dialogue with Trypho." (Schaff's 
"Ante-Nicene Fathers.") 

Kant, Immanuel, 1724^.804. "Introduction to Prolego- 
mena of a Future Metaphysic"; and "Dreams of a 
Ghost-Seer." 

Keller, Helen, 1911. "The Story of My Life." 

A Kempis, Thomas (Hemercher), 1379-1471 (?) "The Three 
Tabernacles." 

Kimball, Heber, C. (Mormon). Journal, n. d. 

Kirk, Edward N., 1802-1874 (Presbyterian). Letter, in 
Life of. 

Knapp, Jacob, 1799-1867. Autobiography. 

Knight, Lydia (Mormon), n. d. History of. 

Knight, Newell C. (Mormon), n. d. Journal. 

Krummacher, F. W., 1796-1868. Autobiography. 

Lacenaire. Short autobiographical sketch in H. B. Irving's 
"French Criminals of the 19th Century," p. 30. 

Lackington, James, 1746-1815. Memoirs of the first forty- 
five years of the life of. 

Lafarge, Marie, veuve, nee Cappelle. Memoires, 1841. 

Lathrop, Joseph, 1731-1820. Memoir. 



538 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 1741-1801. Journal, called "Se 
cret History of a Self-Observer." (In "Geheimes Tage- 
buch von einem Baobachter seiner selbst.") 
N Laythe, T., 1686 (Quaker). Convincement of. 

Lead, Jane, 1623-1714. Diary of. [Unread.] 

Ledieu, n. d. (Quietist). Memoires et journal de. [Un- 
read.] 

Lee, John D. (Mormon), n. d. Confessions of. (See 
"Mormonism unveiled.") [Unread.] 

Lee, Thomas, 1717-1786. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 
minian Magazine.) 
\ Leins, William, 1753-1816. (Quaker testimony.) 

Liebeemann, F. M. P., 1804-1852. Memoire. (Guerin, les 
petites Bollandistes.) 

Linsley, James H., 1787-1844. Memoir of. 

Lisle, Ambrose de, Life and Letters. (Baker, 1900.) [Un- 
read.] 

Livingstone, John, 1603-1672. (Presbyterian.) "A brief 
historical relation of the Life of." (Wodrow Society.) 
• Livingstone, Patrick, 1634-1694. (Quaker testimony.) 

Lobb, Dr. Theophilus, 1678-1755. "The Power of Faith." 

Lomenie de Brienne (fils) , 1636-1688. Memoires in§dits 
du Comte de. 

Lorde, Andre de, about 1911. "Avant-propos de Theatre de 
l'Bpouvante." 

Lorenzino di Medici, 1548-1574. "L' Apologia di." (An- 
cona.) 

Lowengard, Paul, 1910, "La Splendeur Catholique." 

Loyola, St. Ignatius, 1491-1556. Testamentum; trans, by 
Rix (Burns and Oates). 
N Lucas, Margaret, 1701-1769. (Quaker testimony.) 

Lutfullah, 1802-1857. Autobiography of (edited by East- 
wick) . 

Luther, Martin, 1483-1546. "Table-Talk" (Hazlitt); "Let- 
ters, and Life" (P. Smith). 

Macready, William C, 1793-1873. Reminiscences of. 
Mack, Lucy (Mormon), n. d. Experiences of. (In Riley, 
"The Founder of Mormonism," pp. 20-26.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 539 

Mack, Solomon, 1810 (Mormon). Narrative of the Life of. 

(Rare.) 
Maine de Biran, 1766-1824. "Journal intime." (CEuvres 

Inedits; Naville.) 
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 121-180. Meditations (trans. 

by Long). 
Marie de l'Incarnation (Ursuline, of Quebec), 1599-1672. 

Life, by Richadeau. 
Marie de S. Sacrement, about 1642. Confession of. (Gorres, 

vol. v, pp. 156 ft.) 
Marie de Sains, about 1618. Confession of. (Gorres, vol. 

v.) 
Maris, Ann, 1714. Journal, entitled, "The Path of the 

Just." 
Marks, David, 1805-1845. Autobiography of. 
Marsay de, about 1773. Unpublished autobiography. (In 

Vaughan, "Hours with the Mystics," p. 391.) 
Marsden, Joshua, 1777-1814. (Methodist testimony.) 
Marsh, James, 1794-1842 (Presbyterian). Account, in Life 

of. 
* Marshall, Charles, 1637-1698. (Quaker testimony.) 
Martyn, Henry, 1781-1812. Short account, in Life of. 
Mary of the Angels (Carmelite), 1661-1717. Auto- 
biography. (In Life of, by G. O'Neill, S.J.) 
Mary of the Divine Heart (Marie Droste-Vischerine) , 

1863-1899. Autobiography. (In Life of, by L. Chasles.) 
Mason, John, 1733-1810. (Methodist testimony in Armin- 

ian Magazine.) 
Mather, Alexander, 1783-1800. (Methodist testimony in 

Arminian Magazine.) 
Mather, Cotton, 1662-1727. Journals and Meditations. 

(In Life of, by his son.) 
Matthew, Tobie, Sir, 1577-1655. "True Historical account 

of the conversion of." (In Life, by A. H. Mathew.) 
McAuley, Jerry, 1884. Sketch, called "Transformed." (In 

his Life and Work, by S. I. Prime.) 
Mechttldis von Hackeborn, 1241-1310. Revelations of St. 

(In "Liber Specialis Gratiae.") 
Mechttldis von Magdeburg Cbeguine), 1212-1280. Revela- 



540 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

tions, called "Offenbarungen; Oder Das Fliessende Licht 

der Gottheit;" ed. Gall Morel, 1869. (See also Lina 

Eckenstein, "Woman under Monasticism," pp. 332-40.) 
Melvill, Sir James, 1556-1614 (Presbyterian). "Historie 

of the Lyff of." (Wodrow Society.) 
Meeeill, W. S. (Catholic conversion). (In Curtis, "Some 

Roads to Rome," etc.) 
Merswin, Rulman, 1308-1382. "Book of the Five Men," 

and "Book of the Nine Rocks." (See also Jundt "Les 

Amis de Dieu.") 
Meysenbug, Malwida von, n. d. "Memoires d'une Ideal- 

iste." (Trans, from German.) 
Mitchell, Thomas, 1726-1785. (Methodist testimony.) 
"Monk of Evesham," 1483. "Revelations to a." (See 

Coulton, "A Mediaeval Garner.") 
Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592. Essais de. 
Moody, Geanville, 1812-1887 (Methodist). Autobiography 

of. 
Moee, Dame Geeteude, 1606-1633. Apology, and "Confes- 

siones Amantis." (In Weld-Blundell's "The Inner Life 

and Writings of.") 
Moee, De. Heney, 1614-1687. Short Autobiography. (In 

Ward's Life.) 
Mullee, Geoege, 1805-1837. "Narrative of the Lord's deal- 
ings with." 
Muelin, John, 1722-1799. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 

minian Magazine.) 
Mueeay, John, 1741-1814. Autobiography of. 
Musset, Alfeed de, 1810-1857. "La Confession d'un enfant 

de Si§cle." 



*\ Nayloe, James, n. d. (Quaker testimony.) 
> Neale, Samuel, 1729. (Quaker testimony.) 
Neill, William, 1778-1860 (Presbyterian). Autobiography. 
Nelson, John, 1707-1774. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 

minian Magazine.) 
Neussee, Wensel, n. d. (Moravian). (Cited in Wesley's 
"Journal," vol. I, pp. 120, 122.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 541 

Newman, Francis W., 1805 to about 1850. "Phases of 
Faith." 

Newman, J. H., 1801-1890. "Apologia pro Vita Sua." 

Newton, John, 1725-1807. Narrative of the Rev. (In 
Memoir.) 

Nicolai. The Case of, n. d. (In Nicholson's Philosophical 
Journal, vol. 15.) 

Nietzsche, F., 1844-1900, "Ecce Homo;" trans, by Ludovici. 
("Life," by Halevy.) 

Nitschman, David, n. d. (Moravian). (In Wesley's "Jour- 
nal," vol. i, pp. 120-22.) 

Novalis, Friedkich von Hardenburgh, 1772-1801. Diary of. 

Obermann (E. P. de Senancour), 1770-1846. Edited by 

George Sand. 
Olter, J. J., 1608-1657., "Memoires Spirituelles." (In 

"Life" of, by Healy-Thompson.) 
Oltvebs, Thomas, 1725-1791. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 

minian Magazine.) 
Othloh of St. Emmeran, 1010. "Liber de Visione"; "Liber 

de Tentationibus suis." (In Migne, "Pat. Lat." T. 146.) 

Trans, by E. C. Howland. 
Oxley, Joseph, 1715. (Quaker testimony.) 
Ozanam, A. F., 1813-1854. Preface to Letters of. 

Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662. Conversion of. (In' "Pascal," 
by St. Cyres, and Sainte-Beuve's "Port-Royal.") 

Paton, John G., 1824 (Presbyterian). Autobiography. 

Patrick, St., 398-469. Confession of ("Confessio Patricii"). 

Patrick, Symon, Bishop of Ely, 1626-1707. "A brief Ac- 
count of my Life." (Oxford, J. Parker.) 

Pattison, Mark, 1814-1884. Memoirs of. 

Paul, St., 10-62. Acts, chapters ix, xxn and xxvi. 

Paul op Cordova, 869. Confession in metrical Latin prose 
(Migne, "Pat. Lat.," t. 121). 

Paulinus Pell^us, 376-460. "Eucharisticon de vita sua." 

Payne, Thomas, 1741-1783. (Methodist testimony in 
Arminian Magazine.) 



542 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Pawson, John, 1737-1806. (Methodist testimony in Armin- 

ian Magazine.) 
\ Pearson, Jane, 1734-1816 (Quaker). "Sketches of the Life 

and Religious Experiences of." 
Pellican, Dr. Conrad, 1478-1556. "Chronicon vitae ipsius, 

ab ipso conscriptum;" new ed. B. Riggenbach, Basle, 

1877. [Unread.] 
v Penington, Mary (Quaker), d. 1682. "A Brief Account of 

My Exercises from My Childhood." 
Pennyman, John, 1628. (Quaker testimony.) Rare. 
Penry, John, 1693 (Puritan). A Letter to Lord Burghley, 

in Ms., 12 pp. (See Dexter's "Congregationalism in its 

Literature.") [Unread.] 
Perpetuus, Bishop of Tours, 461. "Testamentum." (In 

Migne, "Pat. Lat.," t. 58.) 
Perrot, John, n. d. "A Narrative of the Sufferings of." 

(Rare tract.) 
Peter, Damiani, St., 1000-1072. Letters of. (Migne, "Pat. 

Lat.," T. 144, lib. v.) 
Petersen, Gerlac, 1378-1411. "Fiery Soliloquy with God." 

(Early English Text Society.) 
Petrarca, Francesco, 1304-1374. "Letter© Varie, Fa- 

miliari, e senile;" also "De Contemptu Mundi"; trans. 

as "Petrarch's Secret," "W. H. Draper. 
** Phillips, Catherine, 1726-1794. (Quaker testimony.) 
Philo- Judjeus, about b. c. 10. "On Dreams," and "On the 

Migration of Abraham." (Bohn.) 
\Pike, Joseph, 1657-1729. (Quaker testimony.) 

Pittar, Mrs. Fanny, 1813. "A Protestant Converted." 
Plotinus, 204-270. Enneads of; trans., Thomas Taylor; 

Life, by Porphyry. 
Plumer, William, 1759-1850. Experiences of. (In his 

Life.) 
Pomponazzi, Pietro, 1462-1525. Apologia di. (In "Pietro 

Pomponazzi," by A. H. Douglas.) 
Pope, Alexander, 1688-1744. Preface to the collected 

Works of. 
Pordage, Dr. John, of Bradfield, Berks, 1649. Experi- 
ences, in rare tract, edited by Sir Matthew Hale, and 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 543 

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^ Ratcllff, Mildred, 1773. (Quaker testimony.) 

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Roberts, Robert, 1731-1800. (Methodist testimony.) 

Robins, Julia G. (Catholic conversion). (In Curtis, 
"Some Roads to Rome," etc.) 



544 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Robinson - , Jasper, 1727-1797. (Methodist testimony in 

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 54,5 

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v Stanton, Daniel, 1708-1763. (Quaker testimony.) 



54>6 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

Stenhouse, Fanny (Mrs. T. H. B.), 1829. "Tell it All"; 
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Stephen, Sir Leslie, 1832-1904. "An Agnostic's Apology." 

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^ Story, Thomas, 1742. (Quaker testimony.) Journal. 

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Surin, Pere, 1635. Experiences of. (In "L'homme de 
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Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1688-1772. "Life"; and "Spirit- 
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Tauler, John, 1300-1361. "Life and Letters," by Schmidt. 
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Tennant, Thomas, 1741-1793. (Methodist testimony in 

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Thomas, Joseph, 1791. "The Life of the Pilgrim." 
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Travis, Joseph, 1786 (Methodist). Autobiography. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 547 

Trevor, John, 1855-1897. "My Quest for God." 
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Turner, Joanna, 1732-1785. Account, in Memoir. 

Ubertino da Casale, 1259-1330. "Prologus ad. Arbor Vitae 
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count of God's Dealings with." 



548 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS 

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Wilde, Oscar, 1905. "De Profundus." 
* Wigham, John, 1748-1839. (Quaker testimony.) 

Wilkinson, Robert, 1780. (Methodist testimony in Ar- 

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Prevost. 
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Experiences, in Memoir. 

* Williams, William, 1763-1824. (Quaker testimony.) 

* Wilson, Thomas, 1654-1725. (Quaker testimony.) 
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of Free Mercy to." 

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Strickland. 
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INDEX 



INDEX 



Abelard, 138, 175, 211; attitude to- 
ward confession, 29, 42 ; Letter 
II, 61. 

d'Acosta, Uriel, 173, 180, 251, 304, 
320. 

Adams, Curiosities of Superstition, 
cited, 438. 

d'Agreda, Maria, 196-97, 262, 295, 
315, 343, 344, 346, 361, 369, 
379, 381, 388, 428, 437. 

Alacoque, M. M., 188, 209, 238, 
263, 319, 324, 343, 346, 357, 
370, 381, 388, 437, 473, 484 n. 

Alcuin, 60. 

Al-Ghazzali, 104-08, 172, 183, 200, 
251. 

Al-Koran, 438. 

Allen, John, 192, 205, 237. 

Alexander, Mary, 234. 

Allies, T. W., 254, 325. 

Alline, Henry, 143 n, 164, 180, 199, 
230, 250, 286-87, 306 n, 314, 
439, 443 n. 

Amiel, 262, 381, 437; Journal 
Intime, 131-33, 134, 162. 

d'Ancona, A., cited, 103. 

Andreasi, Osanna, 189, 196, 239, 
285 n, 286 n, 293, 357, 379, 381. 

Angela da Foligno, 175, 196, 250 n, 
262, 283 n, 315, 318, 349 n, 353, 
356, 357, 358, 368, 369, 376, 
426, 437, 474 n. 

Animism, conception of spirits, 76; 
348; Protagoras, 77; Democ- 
ritus, 77-79; theories of, 420, 
430, 454; survivals of, 454 ff, 
465, 468 ff, 479 ff, 485, 486; ex- 
amples in mediaeval times, 465 ff ; 
in individuals, 469 ff, 475 ff. 

Anselm, Abbot of Canterbury, Life 
of, by Rule, containing "Oratio 
meditativo," from the original bi- 
ography by Eadmer, 61, 318. 

Anthropology, 65, 78, 393-94, 418, 
483. 

Apollinaris of Hierapolis, 55 n. 

Apologia, chap. II, 55 n; for par- 
ticular cases, see Bibliography 
of Cases; connotations, 53-54, 66, 
408. 

Aquinas, Thomas, 360. 

Aram, Eugene, 215. 



551 



Arnauld, Angelique, 187-88, 209, 
224, 253-54, 318, 376. 

Arnobius, 55 n. 

Arnold, Matthew, cited, 10, 73, 
300; Poems, quoted, 129. 

Aristides, 55 n. 

Aristotle, 105. 

Ashbridge, Elizabeth, 241, 285 n, 
287, 439. 

Ashman, William, 193, 225, 237, 
259. 

Athanasius, 55 n. 

Athenagoras of Athens, 55 n. 

Audland, John, 312. 

Augustin, 27, 42, 43, 48, 58, 62, 
63, 85, 109, 110, 112, 117, 118, 
119, 120, 138, 142 n, 145, 146, 
162, 163, 165, 175, 180, 199, 
226, 230, 247, 251, 285 n. 287, 
302, 305 n, 312, 315, 323, 344, 
348, 350, 351, 352, 381, 388, 
391, 409, 413 n, 426, 438, 439; 
Confessions, 30-37, 65, 159, 
350-51, 362, 409, 455; first 
Christian psychologist, 90; on 
Unpardonable Sin, 266 ; attitude 
of Clerics toward, 364. 

Autobiographies. See Confessions. 

Autobiographical intention, 42, 49, 
126, 325, 397. 

Babbage, Charles, 167. 
Babylonian confessions, 21. 
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, 

cited, 5, 39. 
Bacon, Roger, 62. 
Bagehot, W., Literary Studies, 

quoted, 402. 
Bangs, Benjamin, 190, 204. 
Banks. John, 191, 255, 316 n. 
Barbanson, 355, 477. 
Barclay, Robert, Apology, cited, 

313. 
Ballinger, Diseases of the Ear, 

quoted, 439-40. 
Balzac, H. de, cited, 133. 134; 

quoted, 138. 
Basil, St., 28, 85. 
Bashkirtsev, Marie, 134; quoted, 

49. 
Baudelaire, Charles de, 127. 
Bavent, Madeleine, 219, 459 n, 463. 
Baxter, Richard, 197, 229. 252. 



552 



INDEX 



Beaumont, John, 167, 373, 374. 
Beecher, H., 193, 211, 239, 261, 

301. 
Beers, W., 166. 
Begbie, Harold, quoted, 274. 
Belief, 414 ff, 479 ; changes in, 

142-43, 408 ff, 455 ; intellectual 

factors in, 402-03 ; emotional 

factors in, 402-03, 454-55; 

Bagehot on, 402. 
Bellarmin, Cardinal, 181, 199, 230. 
Bergson, H„ 82, 113; Creative 

Evolution, quoted, 94. 
Berkeley, George, 103. 
Bernard, views on confession, 29, 

339 n; cited, 85. 
Besant, Annie, 181, 230. 
Bewley, George, 204, 235, 322, 

436 n. 
Binet-Sangle, cited, 310, 388 n. 
Black, William, 237, 259. 
Blair, Robert, 181-82, 199, 230-31, 

315, 382, 386, 424, 443. 
Blanco-White, Joseph, 187, 202, 

320, 474 n. 
Boas, Franz, The Mind of Primitive 

Man, quoted, 429, 472 n. 
Boccaccio, G., 115. 
Boehme, Jacob, 372. 
Bogomils, The, 423. 
Boissier, Gaston, quoted, 406. 
Bollandists, cited, 362, 364. 
Bonaventura, St., 62, 347, 352, 

361, 369. 
Borrow, George, Lavengro, 265. 
Bossuet, 393. 
Boston, T., 178, 197, 229, 252, 

320, 321, 436 n, 443. 
Bourignon, Antoinette, 188, 209, 

238, 292, 315, 318, 346, 358, 

376, 381, 443. 
Bownas, Samuel, 242. 
Bradley, H., 189-93, 288 n, 314 n. 
Brainerd, David, 207, 260, 298. 
Braithwaite, Anna, 190, 204, 235, 

286 n, 297. 
Bray, Billy, 193, 211, 244, 246 n, 

261, 297, 423. 
Brav, Charles, 199, 231, 261. 
Brigitte of Sweden, 367. 
Brinton, D. G., The Religious Senti- 
ment, quoted, 86. 
Broca, Paul, 92. 
Brown, Benjamin, 127 n, 157 n, 

225, 339 n. 
Brown, J. MacMillan, Maori and 

Polynesian, cited, 478 n. 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 211; Beligio 

Medici, 123-24; Urn-Burial, 

quoted, 161, 337, 415. 
Browning, E. B., quoted, 38, 129. 
Browning, Letters, 134. 
Bruno, Giordano, 63, 104, 109. 
Brydges, Egerton, quoted, 285. 
Brysson, George, 260. 321. 



Buchner, cited, 111 n. 

Buddhistic confessions, 22. 

Bunyan, John, 143 n, 151, 199-200, 
216, 226, 240, 250-51, 264, 287, 
312, 319, 465. 

Burckhardt, History of the Italian 
Renaissance, quoted, 114. 

Burton, Robert, Anatomy of Melan- 
choly, cited, 440. 

Byron, 127-28. 



Czesar, Julius, 390. 

Csesarius of Heisterbach, 248, 
433 n. 

Caird, E„ The Evolution of Re- 
ligion, quoted, 6, 8, 91, 102, 129. 

Callaway, Religion of the Amazulu, 
quoted, 373. 

Calvin, John, 142 n, 191, 212, 261, 
311. 

Campbell, Paul the Mystic, quoted, 
308. 

Candour in self-study, 65, 162-66. 

Capers, William, 192, 205, 212, 

243, 258, 317. 

Cardan, Jerome, 31, 34, 42, 48, 64, 
100, 109, 116, 123, 124, 125, 
134, 164, 165, 167, 175, 221, 
374, 425, 438, 439; De Vita 
propria, quoted, 132. 

Carlo da Sezze, 175, 209, 254, 
292, 319, 364 n, 370, 431, 473. 

Carre de Montgeron, 188-89, 211, 

244, 246 n, 295, 443. 

Carter, Jesse B., 407 n, 424 n; 

Religious Life in Ancient Rome, 

quoted, 411, 436. 
Cartwright, Peter, 200, 224-25, 

288, 306 n, 423. 
Carvosso, William, 192, 259. 
Casaubon, Isaac, 124. 
Casaubon, Meric, 221. 
Castiglionchio, 113. 
Catherine of Bologna, 367. 
Catherine of Genoa, 195, 301, 334, 

337, 338-39, 339 n, 342, 372, 

389. 
Catherine of Russia, 47. 
Catherine of Siena, 195, 238, 324, 

339 n, 352. 
Cellini, Benvenuto, 42, 47, 64, 

109, 129, 165. 
Chalkley, Thomas, 153, 182, 231. 
Chantal, Sainte-, 188, 215, 238, 263, 

283 n, 318, 364, 388, 474 n, 

484 n. 
Charles, Henri, 215, 374. 
Chingwauk, the Algonquin, 422, 

443 n. 
Christianity, 274, 275, 347, 406 ff, 

409, 430; tendency toward in- 
trospection, 85 $, 405 ; Neo- 

Platonists, relation to, 88 ff ; 

modern, survivals in, 421, 452, 



INDEX 



553 



453, 457; mediaeval, 427-29, 
451, 474, 476. 

Chrysostom, St. John, 57. 

Church, the, Mariolatry, 451; atti- 
tude toward confession, 25, 31, 
408; attitude toward introspec- 
tion, 84-86, 121; attitude toward 
mysticism, 85, 359-62, 363 ; 
attitude toward "Unpardonable 
Sin," 266; treatment of mystics 
by, 359-62, 363. 

Churchman, John, 203, 234, 255. 

Cibber, Colley, 63. 

Clarke, J. F., 182. 

Cloag, cited, 309, 310. 

Codrington, The Melanesians, cited, 
425 n, 433. 

Cohn, Rev. J. R., cited, 308. 

Coleridge, S. T., 336. 

Collins, Elizabeth, 203. 

Comte, Auguste, quoted, 81, 286, 
400 ; attitude toward psychology, 
81-82, 415, 416. 

Conduct, religion and, 404, 407, 
412, 473-76. 

Confessant, the, use of word, 39 ; 
and mystic, 332, 398; data of, 
420 ff, 443, 457, 463, 466, 483. 

Confessions, chap. II, auricular, 20- 
29, 397, 408; in ancient reli- 
gions, 21-24; Lysander, case of, 
23; in early Christian Church, 
25, 41 ; early meaning, 28 ; 
libelli, 28; Abelard on, 29, 42; 
Bernard, views of, 29 ; Ramon de 
Pefiafort, views of, 31; impulse 
toward, 40-49 ; criminal, 48, 
214 ff; witchcraft, 216 ff, 462 ff. 

Conran, John, 234, 386, 424. 

Contagion, group, 146-47, 223-26, 
367, 456, 467, 470-71. 

Conversion, 246, 248, 249, 273 ff, 
468 ; preexisting immortality, 50- 
52, 151, 315; depression preced- 
ing, 106, 250-64, 269, 280 ff; in 
meeting, 152-53, 297, 300, 313; 
mystical phenomena during, 152, 
247, 287 ff, 375 ff; illness preced- 
ing, 210 ff; theories concerning, 
246-47; 273 ff, 392; personality 
in, 279 ff, 483-85; suggestion in, 
281-86, 287, 293, 299, 376 ff; 
suggestibility in adolescence af- 
fecting, 282-84; methods of, 284, 
285, 286 ff; forms of suggestion 
in. 285-86, 287, 293; Paul's, 
202-11, 385, 386; non-mystical, 
311 ff; reaction from, 313, 
314 #, 323 ff, 326-327, 354 if, 
378, 468 ff; in prison, 371; non- 
religious, 373-74. 

Conybeare and Howson, cited, 309. 

Conybeare, F. C, Myth, Morals, and 
Magic, cited, 25 n. 



Corpus Apologetarum Christian- 
orum, cited, 65, 397, 409. 

Covenanters with God, 321-23, 435, 
436. 

Crawley, A. E., cited, 441. 

Criminal confessions, 48. 

Criminals, tendency toward mysti- 
cism, 216. 

Crisp, Stephen, 200, 231, 251, 312. 

Croker, John, 190, 321. 

Crook, John, 213, 216, 231, 251, 
285 n, 288, 388, 465. 

Crowley, Ann, 235. 

Cusanus, Nicholas, 109. 

Cutten, G. B., The Psychological 
Phenomena of Christianity cited, 
5, 226, 275. 

Cyril of Alexandria, 55 n. 

D'Agreda, Maria. See d'Agreda, 
Maria. 

Dante, Letter to Can Grande, 114, 
115, 116, 329, 348, 349, 426, 
427; Inferno, 267, 268, 487; 
Paradiso, 293 n. 

Davenport, F. M., Primitive Traits 
in Religious Revival, cited, 
421 n, 451 n, 463 n, 471 n. 

David, Christian, 208, 262, 317. 

Davies, Richard, 182, 212, 242. 

Davy, Sir Humphry, 1778-1829, 
cited, 168. 

Day-books. See Confessions. 

Delacroix, E., cited, 12, 355-56; 
quoted, 12, 172, 340 n, 342, 343, 
366. 

Deleloe, Jeanne de St., 178, 197-98, 
224, 230, 253, 266, 295-96, 318, 
319, 376, 442, 474. 

Democritus, 77-79. 

Demoniacal possession, 374, 432, 
468; at Yssel, 217-18; at 
Cambrai, 218-19; at Loudon, 
219, 220, 221, 295, 359, 433, 
486; at Louviers, 219, 359, 433, 
486; at Placido, 359; at Salem, 
Mass., 433-34; at Kirtland, 
Ohio, 434-35, 457, 463; in Scot- 
land, 434; in Switzerland, 435, 
457 ; in China, 435 ; in Virginia, 
435; spiritualism, 457. 

Demons, 61, 220-21, 222, 378-79, 
429 ff, 442-44, 484. 

Depression, 280, 455, 467, 468; 
duration of, 250 ff; character of, 
250, 269; during reaction and 
relapse from conversion, 323 ff, 
326-27, 354 ff, 484. 

De Quincey, Thomas, 44, 64 ; cited, 
47 n, 164, 166. 

Descartes, Rene, 82, 138, Discours 
de la Methode and Meditations, 
104, 107 ff. 

Dewey, Orville, 193, 207, 243-44. 

Diaries. See Confessions. 



554 



INDEX 



Dill, S., Roman Society, cited, 

407 n. 
Dickinson, James, 190. 
Dickinson, Peard, 192, 206, 237, 

257. 
Dion, Cassius, 373. 
Dionysius, the Areopagite, 337 n, 

347. 348, 352, 369. 
Documents, chap. IV, 397, 410, 

455; mystical, 362 ff, 369. 
Dods, Marcus, Forerunners of 

Dante, cited, 61 n, 367 n. 
Dostoievski, crime and punishment, 

43. 
Doutte, E., Magie et Religion dans 

I'Afrique du Nord, 422 n, 425 n, 

430. 431, 433, 455. 
Dow, Lorenzo, 154 n, 205, 236, 

257, 301. 
Dreams, 301, 430. 
Duchesne, Pere, Histoire Ancienne 

de I'Eglise, cited, 26 n, 65 n. 
Dudley, Mary, 191, 204-05, 235, 

256. 
Dunton, John, 182, 212. 

Eberin, Margaret, 196, 368, 377. 
Ecstasy, 330, 343, 344, 349, 350 ff, 

356. 373, 379, 386, 424-29, 
467; Lea on, 359. 

Edmundson, William, 251. 

Education, 177 ff, 194. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 210, 239, 262, 
286 n, 294, 314, 315, 377; 
Narrative of Surprising Con- 
versions, quoted, 156, 223, 386, 
471-72. 

Ego, the, 86, 91, 99-100, 277, 356, 
358, 387, 477; in Job, 399. 

Egyptian confessions, 21. 

Eliot, George, Romola, quoted, 31. 

Eliphaz the Temanite, 384-85. 

Elizabeth of Schonau, 62, 367. 

Ellis, A. B., The Ewe-speaMng 
Peoples of the Gold Coast, cited, 
422 n, 431 n, 459 n. 

Ellwood, Thomas, 153. 

Emmerich, A. C, 189, 197, 239, 
252, 295, 315, 319, 343, 346, 

357, 378, 381, 437, 474. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, cited, 10, 

122, 130-31, 333; quoted, 49, 

481. 
Eneas Sylvius, 121. 
Ephraim Syrus, cited, 59, 85, 291. 
Epictetus, Discourses, quoted, 87. 
Epidemics, hysterical, 219, 359, 

432-35; 467; of witchcraft, 219, 

457 ff, 460 ff, 486; of the jerks, 

225, 434. 
Equitius, St., 433 n. 
Eudes. John, 188, 230. 
Eusebius of Csesarea, 55 n. 
Evans, William, 190, 212. 242. 
Evidence, 324, 329, 354, 383. 



Exomologesis, rite of, 25; influence 

toward introspection, 86. 
Exorcism, 196, 220, 221, 432-35, 

454. See Demoniacal possession. 

Faith, 58, 65, 171. 

Fasting, 373, 375, 421-24; Cather- 
ine of Genoa, 334, 338-39, 342. 

Favre, Peter, 189, 197, 224, 239, 
262, 320, 431, 445 n, 473. 

Ferrero, Guglielmo, Characters and 
Events in Roman History, 
quoted, 6. 

Fery, Jeanne, 218-19, 435. 

Fetich, 402, 445, 472, 473; fetich- 
worship, 402. 

Fichte, J. G., cited, 99, 111-12. 

Fielding, Henry, 189, 207-08. 

Finney, C. G., 182, 211, 251, 
286 n, 288, 306 n, 423. 

Fleay, J. G., 167 n, 294 n. 

Flechere, John de la, 205, 259. 

Fletcher, Alice H., Handbook of 
American Indians, cited 373 n, 
421 n. 

Fletcher, Mary, 154 n, 206, 237, 

256, 285 n, 299, 467. 
Flight, mystical, 445. 
Follows, Ruth, 190. 

Fontaine, James de la, 190, 230. 

Foscolo, Ugo, 127. 

Fothergill, John, 190, 204, 235, 

256. 
Fox, George, 143 n, 145, 150 ff, 

158, 165, 172, 177, 182, 191, 

213, 231, 247, 251, 288, 312, 

319, 323, 342, 438, 443. 
France, Anatole, Jeanne d'Arc, 

cited, 248. 
Francis of Assisi, St., 115, 339 n. 
Frangoise Romaine, 367. 
Francke, A. EL, 192, 259. 
Fraser, James, of Brae, 182, 200, 

241, 316, 319. 
Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough, 

cited, 65, 418 n, 441, 442 n, 

465 ; quoted, 478 n. 
Friends. See Quakers. 
Froude, R. H., 162, 210. 
Furz, John, 193, 205, 237, 258, 

285 n, 299. 
Fustel de Coulanges, La Cite 

Antique, cited, 77 n. 

Galton, Francis, quoted, 282. 
Gardner, Edmund, Dante and the 

Mystics, quoted, 333-34; cited, 

97 n, 369. 
Gardiner, Colonel, 254, 285 n, 286, 

291, 306 n, 386, 424 n. 
Garretson, Freeborn, 154 n, 192, 

257, 285 n, 300. 

Gates, R., 207, 243, 259, 298. 
Genius, 143-44 ; relation to mysti- 
cism, 341-46, 356, 381. 



INDEX 



555 



Gerard-Gailly, E., Bussy-Babutin, 
quoted, 365. 

Gerson, John, 360. 

Gertrude of Eisleben, 175, 198, 
224, 244, 252, 286 n, 289-90, 
315, 353, 357, 367, 414, 428, 

432, 474 n. 

Ghazzali, A1-, 104-08, 172, 183, 200, 

251. 
Giuliani, Veronique, 196, 295, 377, 

444. 
Giusti, G., 127. 
Glaber, Raoul, 61, 262, 286 n, 

429 n, 433, 442. 
Goethe, W. von, 34, 465. 
Gomperz, Th., quoted, 331; cited, 

54 n, 59 n, 77 n, 81 n. 
Gordon, Alexander, 191, 260, 467. 
Gorres, Mystique Divine, Naturelle, 

et Diabolique, quoted, 30; cited, 

218, 219, 332, 340, 426 n, 432 n, 

444, 463 n. 
Gosse, Edmund; Father and Son, 

183, 224, 231-32, 445 n. 
Gotteschalchus, 60. 
Gottesfreunde, 145. 
Gough, James, 183, 203, 214. 
Gough, John B., 51, 323. 
Grasset, E., 168, 340 n, 388 n. 
Gratry, Father A., 263 n. 
Gratton, John, 152 n, 191, 204, 

235, 256, 300, 370, 443. 
Green, Ashbel, 191, 207, 317. 
Greek confessions, 23. 
Gregory the Great, cited, 85, 433 n. 
Gregory of Nyssa, 28. 
Gregorovius, History of the Middle 

Ages, cited, 450 n. 
Grellet, Stephen, 191, 235, 285 n, 

297. 
Grey, Maxwell, The Silence of Dean 

Maitland, cited, 43 n. 
Griffith, John, 235, 255. 
Grote, History of Greece, cited, 

81 n. 
Group, contagion, 146-47, 367, 423, 

470-71. 
Groups, 10, 144-47 ff, 171, 172, 

364-65, 366; Gottesfreunde, 144, 

367; Methodists, 145, 247; Mor- 
mons, 145 ; Quakers, 145, 150, 

247; Port-Royalists, 145; Pietists, 

145. 
Guerin, Eugenie and Maurice de, 

Journals of, 134. 
Guibert de Nogent, 61, 175, 183-84, 

224, 232, 288, 344 n, 376, 391, 

433, 435, 474. 

Gummere, Amelia M., The Quaker, 

cited, 152 n. 
Gummere, Francis B., Democracy 

and Poetry, quoted, 398. 
Gurneys of Earlham, the, 134-36, 

159, 178. 211, 230. 



Guyon, Jeanne de La-Mothe, 145, 

175, 184, 200, 222, 232, 250 n, 

251, 263, 288, 318, 343, 363, 

373, 376, 380, 391, 414, 429 n, 

437, 442, 474 n, 474. 

Haddon, Thomas, The Papuans, 

cited, 425 n. 
Hagger, Mary, 190, 204, 235, 298. 
Haime, John, 154, 154 n, 206, 243, 

256 299 320 
Hale, Sir Matthew, 216,221, 486 n. 
Hall, G. Stanley, Adolescence, 

quoted, 282. 
Halhead, Myles, 256, 263 n, 298, 

467. 
Hallam, cited, 450 n, 451, 474. 
Haliburton, Thomas, 172, 179, 198, 

240, 246 n, 252-53, 319, 322, 

436 n. 
Hall, David, 190, 203, 213, 465. 
Hall, Joseph, 179, 198. 230. 
Hallucinations, 197, 352 ff, 374-75, 

461, 467, 485; auditory, 154, 

285, 286, 296, 443; visual, 154, 

222, 286, 296, 422, 443, 454. 
Hamilton, Alexander, Reynolds 

Pamphlet, quoted, 64. 
Hanby, Thomas, 192. 
Hanson, Thomas, 192, 259, 299. 
Hare, A. J. C. 184, 232. 
Harnack, cited, 309. 
Harrison, Frederic, 184, 211. 
Hartley, 103. 
Hartmann, 416 n. 
Haslett, William, 191, 260. 
Havet, Ernest, Le Christianisme et 

ses Origines, cited, 7, 75 n, 406 n. 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet 

Letter, cited, 43; The Marble 

Faun, quoted, 47. 
Haydon, B. R., 166. 
Hayes, Alice, 200, 380. 
Health, 194 ff, 279, 390, 465; good, 

135, 195, 211 ff; bad, 134, 195, 

196 ff; abnormal, 212. 
Hearn, L., cited, 442. 
Heaven, 352, 367, 428, 430, 454. 
Hebrew confessions, 24. 
Hell, 352, 367, 428, 429-30, 454. 
Herbart, 97. 

Herbert of Cherbury, 374. 
Heredity, 177 ff, 194, 465. 
Hermannus, Abbot, 175. 
Hermas, Shepherd of, 58. 
Hesse, Les Criminels peints par 

eux-memes, cited, 216. 
Heywood, Oliver, 191, 212, 243. 

260. 
Hibbard. B., 192, 257, 299, 317. 
Hibbert, Philosophy of Apparitions, 

cited, 166. 
Hildegarde of Bingen, 62, 175-76, 

187, 198, 224, 230, 320, 346, 

367, 375-76, 426. 



556 



INDEX 



Hierocles, 75 n. 

Hirsch, W., Genius and Degenera- 
tion, quoted, 40, 390. 
Hoag, Joseph, 152 n, 190, 200, 232, 

252, 265, 285 n, 289, 306, 319, 

380, 439, 443. 
Hoffding, on psychology, 275. 
Hopkins, Samuel, 192, 211, 260, 

317. 
Hopper, Christopher, 193, 206, 225. 
Hose and McDougall, Pagan Tribes 

of Borneo, cited, 431 n, 432 n, 

437 n. 
Hoskins, Jane, 190, 204, 242, 256, 

285 n, 298, 306 n, 474 n. 
Howgill, Francis, 153, 200, 232, 

252. 
Hudson-Taylor, 245, 285 n, 293, 

321 
Hugel,' F. von, 332, 333, 334, 336, 

338, 346, 372, 389. 
Hull, Henry, 190, 204, 235. 
Hume, David, 103, 111, 418; 

quoted, 415. 
Hunter, William, 236, 257. 

Iamblichus, 62, 89, 405. 

Individualism, rise of, 398 #, 410, 
411 #; the Church and, 362-63. 

Introspection, chap, in, 52 ; defini- 
tion, 71; attitudes toward, 72-73; 
Plato, 74-75, 86; Socrates, 74; 
(Sophists, 77; relation to meta- 
physics, 82-84, 111 ; in philos- 
ophy, 82, 94, 97-98, 103 ff, 
111#; in religion, 83-86, 104 ff, 
121, 402-03; attitude of Church 
toward, 84-86, 121; Christianity, 
tendency of, toward, 85 ff, 397; 
Marcus Aurelius, 87; Epictetus, 
87; Rousseau, 87, 111, 124-26; 
Seneca, 87; Neo-Platonists, 88- 
90, 130, 402, 405, 413; Plotinus, 
88; Schopenhauer, 91, 112; as a 
factor in psychology, 93, 97 ff; 
William James, attitude of, to- 
ward, in psychology, 93, 100 ; 
Kant, 97, 111; Fichte, 99, 111- 
12; Cardan, 100, 109; in sci- 
ence, 103, 113, 129, 134; intro- 
spective type in literature, 101 ; Al- 
Ghazzali, 104-08; Descartes, 104, 
107 ff ; relation of, to mysticism, 
106, 114, 215; Montaigne, 109, 
122-23; Schelling, 112; Augus- 
tin, 112, 117, 118, 119, 120, 
351; Nietzsche, 113; minor ex- 
amples, 113, 134; Dante, 114, 
115, 116; Petrarch, 115-20; 
Eneas Sylvius, 121 ; Browne, 
123-24; Byron, 127-28; Shelley, 
128-29; Emerson, 130-31; Amiel, 
131-33; Gumeys, the, 134-36; 
Wilde, 136-38; Job, 400-02; See 
Self -study; and Health, 134-35. 



Intoxication, 423, 424. 
Ireland, W. H., 214. 
Islamic confessions, 22. 
Ivan the Terrible, 47. 

Jackson, William, 214, 257, 300. 
Jaco, Peter, 155, 192, 205, 236, 

257, 300, 443. 
Jaffray, Alexander, 204, 242. 
James, Epistle of, 407. 
James, J. A., 192, 243, 317. 
James, William, 61, 63, 94 n, 100, 

247, 275, 276, 277, 332, 340, 

347, 394; quoted, 44, 93, 134, 

337, 464, 474, 480. 
Janet, Pierre, The Mental State of 

Hystericals, 283, 284, 340 n, 

388 n. 
Jarratt, Devereux, 190, 244. 
Jastrow, Morris, The Liver as the 

Seat of the Soul, cited, 91 n; Re- 
ligion of Babylonia and Assyria, 

cited, 21 n. 
Jeanne, des Anges, Mere, 187, 210, 

220-21, 222, 223, 262, 373, 374, 

377, 381, 388, 429 n, 433, 435, 

442. 
Jefferis, Edith, 204, 234. 
Jerome, St., 55 n, 56, 65, 85, 253, 

291, 294, 318, 321, 344 n, 376; 

quoted, 193-94, 198, 423, 476 n. 
Jevons, Introduction to the Study 

of Religion, cited, 8, 400. 
Job, Book of, 399-400, 401, 435. 

See Eliphaz the Temanite. 
John of Avila, 360, 363, 476. 
John of the Cross, St., 355-59, 363, 

427. 
John of Fidanza. See St. Bona- 

ventura, 62. 
John of Salisbury, 189 ; Metalogicus, 

61. 
Joly, Henri, 365. 
Jones, Peter, 225, 259. 
Jones, Rufus, 332 n; quoted, 334, 

336, 341. 
Jordan, Richard, 190, 242, 256. 
Jouffroy, Th., 240 n. 
Journals. See Confessions. 
Joyce, Matthias, 151 n, 155, 193, 

214, 237, 259, 300. 
Juliana of Norwich, 175, 209, 254, 

291-92, 367, 369, 437, 443. 
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with 

Trypho, 55 n, 57, 58, 187. 

Kant, Immanuel, attitude toward 
psychology, 97; Critique, 111. 

Keller. Helen, 45, 190, 212, 245. 

a, Kempis, Thomas, 175, 312, 358. 

Kidd, Dudley, The Essential Kaffir, 
cited, 425 n. 

Kierkegaard, Soren, 113 n. 

Kimball, H. C, 435. 

Kirk, E. N., 225, 243, 260, 317. 



INDEX 



557 



Klunzinger, Upper Egypt, cited, 

422 n. 
Knapp, Jacob, 207, 239, 261, 297, 

318 
Knight, Newell, 434. 
Kotzebue, A. V., 126. 
Krug, William, 113 n. 

Lacenaire, 215, 263 n. 

Lackirtgton, James, etc., 159, 184, 
212, 304, 316, 319. 

Lactantius, 55 n. 

Lafarge, Marie, 215, 216. 

Lang, Andrew, The Making of Re- 
ligion, quoted, 465. 

Lathrop, Joseph, 190, 210, 245, 
246 n, 322. 

Lavater, 126. 

Law. method of study in, 12-13. 

Law, Thomas, Serious Call, 312. 

Laythe, Thomas, 213, 370, 467. 

Lea, H. C, 25, 27, 28, 357, 358, 
359, 360, 361, 375, 433 n, 460, 
461, 462; cited, 217, 412; His- 
tory of Auricular Confession, 26, 
38, 40. 

LeBon, Gustave, La Foule, cited, 
144, 226, 246. 

Leckv, History of European Morals, 
cited, 344 n, 433, 450 n. 

Lee. Thomas, 236, 257, 300, 324. 

Legue and La Tourette, La Pos- 
session de la M.ere Jeanne, cited, 
220. 

Lehmann, E., 332 n, quoted, 343. 

Leibnitz, 110. 

Le Mans, Robert of, 28. 

Leuba, Dr., 214 n. 

Lewis, William, 191, 203, 242. 

Libelli, 28. 

Liebermann, F., M.P., 188, 254. 

Linn, cited, 371 n, 386 n. 

Linsley, H., 143 n, 214, 242, 261, 
299, 324, 414, 443, 484 n. 

Literary, influences, 64. 

Livingstone, John, 164 n, 212, 241, 
256, 316. 

Livingstone, Patrick, 204, 234. 

Lobb, Theophilus, Dr., 322, 436 n, 
443. 

Locke, John, 103, 111. 

Lomenie, de Brienne, 185, 212, 
319 

Lorde," Andre, de, 166, 214. 

Lorenzino de Medici, 63. 

Lowengard, Paul, 143 n, 188, 209, 
238, 304, 325. 

Loyola, St. Ignatius, 187, 198-99, 
226, 240, 253, 286, 286 n, 290, 
305 n, 312, 342, 353, 359, 365, 
372, 373, 388, 391, 423, 437, 
445 n ; quoted, 29. 

Lucas, Margaret, 191, 203, 265, 
297, 324, 380. 

Luis of Granada, 358. 



Lumby, Dr., cited, 309. 

Lutfullah, 200, 201, 232. 

Luther, Martin, 143 n, 158, 172, 
316, 342, 387, 433, 487; objec- 
tion to confession, 39 n ; quoted, 
164, 251, 285-86, 288, 294 n, 
314, 318, 348; attitude toward 
apparitions, 221-23, 253. 

Lysander. See Confessions. 

McAuley, Jerry, 193, 207, 244, 

246 n, 261, "285 n, 297, 320. 
McGiffert, 309, 310. 
Macaulay, Thomas B., quoted, 50. 
Macready, William C, 201. 
Mack, Solomon, 203, 251. 
Maeterlinck, M., L'Oiseau Bleu, 

cited, 400. 
Magdalena de la Cruz, 217. 
Magdalena de la Palude, 219, 

463 n. 
Magic, 412, 454, 462 ff. 
Maimon, Solomon, 47 n. 
Manu, Laws of, 7, 22; quoted, 73. 
Maine de Biran, 100, 131; his 

psychological journal, 103. 
Marcus Aurelius, 87, 405. 
Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, 29, 

339 n. 
Marie de L'Incarnation, 211, 238, 

254, 315, 319, 324, 357, 364 n. 
Marie de St. Sacrement, 219, 435. 
Marie de Sains, 217-18, 222, 374, 

459 n. 
Maris, Ann, 190. 
Marks, David, 236, 298, 317. 
Marsay, M. de, 187, 208-09, 324, 

376, 381. 
Marsden, Joshua, 192, 206, 237. 
Marsh, James, 207. 
Marshall, Charles, 190, 234, 256, 

320, 324. 
Martineau, Harriet, 134. 
Martyn, Henry, 190, 244. 
Mary of the Angels, 188, 196, 239, 

262, 315, 378, 382, 432. 
Mary of the Divine Heart, 315, 

318, 357, 379. 
Mason, John, 192, 259. 
Mather, Alexander, 192, 324. 
Mather, Cotton, 192. 
Matthew, St., quoted, 404. 
Matthew, Sir Tobie, 187, 244. 
Maudsley, Henry, 437; quoted, 264. 
Mechtildis, Ste., 52, 175, 210, 224, 

296, 352, 367, 369, 414. 
Medical-materialists, 195, 283, 310, 

340, 387-90. 
Melito of Sardis, 55 n. 
Melville, James, 191, 238. 
Memory, 276, 424 ff; mystical 

memory, 349, 350, 426 ff; views 

of the St. Victors on, 349-50, 

427; Paul, 426; Dante on, 427; 



558 



INDEX 



views of John of the Cross on, 
427; Teresa's views on, 427; ves- 
tigiary, 459 ff; in witchcraft, 
459 ff, 463. 

Menzies, Allan, History of Religion, 
cited, 22 n, 23 n; quoted, 412, 
413, 416. 

Merimee, Prosper, 134, 168. 

Merswin, Rulman, 210, 244, 253, 
295, 318, 368, 377. 

Metaphysics, introspective charac- 
ter, Greek, 79-80, 82-84, 100, 
111; in mvstical writings, 333. 

Methodists, 145, 148-50, 153-56, 
212, 320, 325. 

Meyer, Eduard, History of An- 
tiquity, 406 n. 

Meyer, quoted, 309. 

Meysenbug, Malwida von, 189, 208, 
239 

Michelet, 176, 220, 457 n, 461 n, 
463 n. 

Middle Ages, 352, 366, 412, 428, 
436, 442, 450-452, 462, 466, 
474, 476 ; imagination during, 
286, 368, 459; women during, 
315. 

Mill, J. S., 134, 165, 276; quoted, 
72. 

Milman, quoted, 329, 330, 334, 
345, 476; cited, 358 n. 

Minucius, Felix, 55 n. 

Miracles, 371, 433. 

Misinterpreted observation, 372-73, 
380, 382, 386-87, 409, 440, 471. 

Mitchell, Thomas, 236, 257, 316. 

Modern Psychology. See Psychol- 
ogy. 

Monk of Evesham, 214, 367. 

Montaigne, 36, 109, 122-23, 134. 

Montesquieu, L'Esprit des Lois, 5. 

Moody, Granville, 193, 239, 301. 

Moody, William Vaughn, Poems, 
472. 

More, Gertrude, 143 n, 187, 211, 
224, 244, 262-63, 295, 320, 376- 
77. 

More, Dr. Henry, 185, 232, 252. 

Morley, John, cited, 52, 128; 
quoted, 125, 482. 

Mormons, 145, 156-59, 457, 463, 
473. 

Miiller, George, 51, 164, 165, 191, 
207, 214, 242, 250, 305 n, 324. 

Miiller, F. Max, Science of Thought, 
cited, 45 n. 

Murlin, John, 151 n, 243. 

Murray, Gilbert, Four Stages of 
Greek Religion, 478 n. 

Murray, John, 191-92, 211, 260. 

Musset, Alfred de, 127. 

Mysticism, chap, vill, 172, 183-84, 
284, 314, 479; Neo-Platonism, 



62; mystical way, the, 62, 95, 
96, 200, 296, 337, 352, 355 ff, 
372; attitude of Church toward, 
85, 359-62, 363; self-study and, 
88, 106, 114, 351, 413; and 
health, 195, 200, 208, 345, 346, 
361, 390; medical-materialists, 
195, 283-84, 340, 387 ff ; mys- 
tical phenomena during conver- 
sion, etc., 202, 247, 286-301, 
352, 437, 442; and crime, 216 ff; 
modern theories of, 332 ff; 
340 ff; 352; relation of genius 
toward, 341-46, 356; egotism and, 
344, 356-58, 473-77, 486; origin 
of divine union, 346 ff, 353, 355; 
as a process, 354, 366, 375, 380, 
390-92, 469 ff; revelations, 

367 if, 428 ff; compared with 
savage phenomena, 373; paucity 
of truths discovered, 381, 389- 
90; mystical flight, 445. See 
Memory. 

Nansen, F., Eskimo Life, cited, 
425 n, 431, 441. 

Naylor, James, 263 n, 298. 

Neale, Samuel, 190, 204, 235, 255, 
297, 317, 320, 322, 380. 

Neill, William, 207, 237. 

Nelson, John, 143 n, 154, 192, 206, 
237, 256, 320. 

Neo-Platonists, 130; relation of 
mysticism to, 62 ; introspective 
tendency, 88-90, 401, 405; dis- 
appearance before Christianity, 
405 ; anti- Christian influence, 
405. 

Nevius, Demon Possession in China, 
cited, 435, 457 n. 

Newman, Francis, 230, 250 n, 
474 n. 

Newman, J. H., 63, 211, 414; 
Apologia pro vita sua, 53, 163, 
179, 230, 253, 325. 

Newton, John (1725-1807), 185, 
241, 246 n, 319, 324. 

Newton, Thomas, 65. 

Nicolai, 166-67. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 113, 179, 214, 
245. 

Nitschman, David, 208, 262, 301, 
314, 320. 

Norm, the, 176, 243, 249. 

Notestein, W., History of Witch- 
craft, cited, 459 n, 460 n. 

Novalis, 113. 

Obermann, 127, 134, 210. 

Olier, Jean Jacques, 188, 238, 319, 

324. 
Olivers, Thomas, 151 n, 205, 242- 

43, 257, 300, 324. 



INDEX 



559 



Origen, cited, 25, 26, 85, 433 n. 

Othloh of St. Einmeran, 29, 179, 
199, 238, 286 n, 290, 306 n, 319, 
344 n, 376, 380, 424 n, 433, 442. 

Oxley, Joseph, 204, 242, 255. 

Ozanam, A. F., 188, 254. 

Pamphilus, 55 n. 

Parentage, 177 ff, 194. 

Pascal, cited, 86, 181, 214, 253, 

274, 286 u, 293, 443 n, 445. 
Pater, Walter, Marius the Epicu- 
rean, cited, 75. 
Paton, J. G., 212. 
Patrick, St., 60, 185, 211, 232, 

252, 285 n, 289. 
Patrick, Symon, 185, 201, 233. 
Pattison, Mark, 185, 201. 
Paul, St., 144 n, 178, 200, 209, 
247, 285 n, 325, 387, 388, 406, 
407, 408, 426; his conversion, 
302-11, 339, 342, 385-86. 
Paul of Cordova, 60. 
Paulinus Pelkeus, 185, 201. 
Pawson, John, 192, 225, 242, 257, 

300. 
Pavne, Thomas, 154 n, 192, 214, 

236. 299. 
Pearson, Jane, 233. 
Pennyman, John, 213, 256. 
Pentateuch, 413. 
Pepvs, Samuel, 47. 
Perpetuus of Tours, 60. 
Perrot, John, 213. 
Perrot, Nicholas, 373 n, 421 n. 
Personality, 276 ff, 284, 483-84; 
dual, 83-84; theories of, 276, 
277; in conversion, 277, 279-281, 
284, 392; survivals in, 462 ff, 
469. 
Peter of Alcantara, 475. 
Peter Damiani, 60. 
Petersen, Gerlac, 367. 
Petrarca, Francesco, quoted, 36-38, 

115-20. 
Pfieiderer, cited, 308, 416 n. 
Phillips, Catherine, 203, 234, 254- 

55, 264. 
Philo-Judseus, quoted, 59; cited, 

374. 
Pietists, 145. 
Piety, chap. VI, early, 229-40, 465 ; 

late, 240-45. 
Pike, Joseph, 235, 321. 
Pittar, Fanny, 188, 210, 238, 

474 n. 
Plato, cited, 74-75, 86. 
Plotinus, Enneads of, 62, 88, 347, 

348, 352, 405, 437. 
Plumer, William, 210, 240, 261. 
Plutarch, 23. 

Pomponazzi, Pietro, 54, 109. 
Pope, Alexander, quoted, 165. 



Pordage, John, Dr., 167, 373. 

Porphyry, letter to Anebo, 59, 89, 
405. 

Port-Royalists, 145, 175; St. Cyran, 
35. 

Pratt, C, Psychology of Religious 
Belief, 249, 278. 

Pratt, Orson, 225. 

Pratt, P. P., 157 n, 225. 

Prickard, John, 192, 205, 242, 300, 
324. 

Prince, Morton, Symposium on the 
Subconscious, quoted, 99. 

Pringle, Walter, 233. 

Pritchard, John, 151 n, 205, 237. 

Proclus, cited, 89, 130. 

Prosper of Aquitaine, 60. 

Protagoras, 77, 80, 134. 

Psalmanazar, George, 214. 

Psychology, 65, 275, 456; ancient, 
65; Comte's attitude toward, 81- 
82, 97; modern experimental, 82, 
92, 95, 276, 277; Kant's atti- 
tude, 97; introspective methods 
in, 111; "B" region in, 463-64, 
468, 472. 

Pythagoras, on self-examination, 75. 

Quadratus, 55 n. 

Quakers, 134-35, 145, 150-53, 159, 

203, 212, 249, 323, 325, 366; 

mysticism in, 380, 437. 
Questionnaire, the, disapproved, 39, 

149, 275, 394, 397. 

Ramon de Penafort, views on con- 
fession, 31. 

Rankin, Thomas, 192, 205, 243, 
258 

Ratcliff, Mildred, 191, 203-04, 235, 
297. 

Ratisbonne, Alphonse de, 188, 209, 
254, 286 n, 295, 304, 325, 445 n, 
473. 

Reid. 103. 

Reinach, S., Orpheus, cited, 28, 
363 n, 416. 

Religion, 414 ff, 416 ff, 479 ff, 
483 ff; mass, 7, 410; individual, 
7, 411; data for study, 14; re- 
lation of, to> introspection, 83-86, 
121, 462-63; religious instinct, 
391-94, 415-16, 481, 485 ff; rise 
of subjective, 400 ff ; rise of re- 
ligious sentiment, 400 ff, 410 ff, 
416, 454; and philosophy, 406 ff; 
453; national, 410, 411, 413 ff, 
454 ff. 

Renan, Ernest, 58, 185-86, 201, 
303, 305-06, 307, 310, 371, 386, 
407, 414; quoted, 201, 471, 485. 

Rendall, quoted, 308. 

Revelations, 362-69, 428 ff. 



560 



INDEX 



Revivals, religious, 223, 224-26, 

451, 456, 457 ff, 463, 465, 466- 

68, 470-72, 473-77, 479-85. 
Rhodes, Benjamin, 192, 258. 
Ribot, Th., cited, 340 n. 
Rice, Luther, 207, 236, 260, 298, 

322. 
Richardson, John, 190, 204. 
Richelieu, 390. 
Richter, Jean-Paul, 126 ; quoted, 

94. 
Rigge, Ambrose, 235. 
Riley, The Founder of Mormonism, 

cited, 156 n, 157 n, 371 n, 435, 

445. 
Roberts, Robert, 192. 
Rodda, Richard, 154 n, 192, 212, 

236, 257, 300. 
Rogers, James, 237. 
Rolle, Richard, of Hampole, 143 n, 

178, 211, 244, 294, 314, 377, 

414, 443. 
Romanes, G-. J., 103. 
Rousseau, 34, 42, 48, 63, 87, 111, 

124-26, 134, 164, 165, 166, 175, 

393; Confessions, 47 n, 51, 52. 
Rufinus, 55 n, 56. 
Rutherford, Thomas, 193, 316, 324. 

Sabatier, cited, 309, 310, 311. 

Sadler, cited, 308. 

Sainte-Beuve, C. A., Port-Royal, 

cited, 7, 122, 253 n; quoted, 36, 

145. 
St. Cyres, Pascal, quoted, 274. 
Saint-Martin, L. C. de, 208, 374. 
Salimbene, Fra, 215, 224, 233, 263, 

286 n, 290, 314, 451 n, 467, 

474 n. 
Salmon, Joseph, 260, 293, 321. 
Sanctity, 360, 361, 365, 430, 431, 

436-37, 444. 
Sand, George, cited, 445 n; Ooer- 

mann, 13. 
Sansom, Oliver, 190, 233, 285 n, 

289. 
Saul, King, 422. 
Savery, William, 255. 
Sayce, cited, 21 n. 
Scaramelli, S. J., cited, 84 n. 
Schelling, 112. 
Schieler-Heuser, cited, 24 n. 
Schimmelpenninck, 186, 201-02, 

233 320 
Schleiermacher, E., 190, 239. 
Schopenhauer, Arthur, cited, 91, 

112. 
Schouvaloff, Gregoire, 186, 241, 

263, 313 n, 317. 
Schurman, Anna van, 186, 233. 
Scott, Job, 233, 252, 320. 
Seott, Thomas, 207, 244, 261, 312. 
Self -consciousness, 91 ff; the Ego, 



91, 99-100, 277; personality and, 
93 ff, 277; definition of, 100. 

Self -study, 63, 402, 405; candour, 
42, 152-56; and mysticism, 98, 
106, 413; scientific, 109, 116, 
166-68, 175 ; modern, 409. See 
Introspection. 

Seneca, 87, 405. 

Sewall, Jotham, 237. 

Shadford, George, 151 n, 205, 237, 
258. 

Shaler, N. S., 210, 245. 

Shelley, 34, 51, 128-29, 390. 

Sherburne, Andrew, 207, 260. 

Shillitoe, Thomas, 190, 212, 242. 

Simeon, Charles, 210, 244, 254. 

Sidis, Boris, Suggestion, quoted, 
281-82, 286. 

Simon, George, 215, 216. 

Sin, 254; Unpardonable, 263-69; 
Augustin on, 266; as a survival, 
267, 268, 477-79. 

Sincerity in autobiography, 8. 

Sinclar, George, Satan's Invisible 
World Discovered, cited, 213 n, 
221, 459 n, 487. 

Smith, Elias, 242, 298. 

Smith, Frederick, 214, 242, 246 n, 
250. 

Smith, Joseph, 157-58, 180, 213, 
240, 251, 292-93, 321, 343 n, 
358, 379, 381, 387, 383, 428, 
437, 439, 442, 443, 443 n, 445, 
465, 473. 

Socrates, Apology, 54, 405, 425 ; 
his daemon, 59 n; attitude to- 
ward, 74. 

Sophists, 77, 80. 

Soul, 405; size of the, 76, 441- 
42; Greek idea of, 77-79; mediae- 
val ideas of the, 347, 348; wan- 
dering of the, 347 ff, 350, 353, 
424-29, 430; Roman ideas of the, 
411, 425 n; savage ideas of the, 
425 ff. 

Southcott, Joanna, 197, 214, 239, 
263 n, 294, 343, 346, 379, 381, 
387, 388, 437, 465. 

Speech, relation to thought, 44-45. 

Spencer, Herbert, 65, 134, 165, 
414, 418 n ; Principles of Sociol- 
ogy, cited, 167 n, 424 n, 480 n. 

Spencer and Gillen, cited, 444. 

Spinoza, Benedictus, 110, 487. 

Spring, Gardiner, 225, 240, 260, 
293 

Spurgeon, C. H., 193, 207, 244, 
261. 

Staniforth, Sampson, 154 n, 192, 
242, 264, 286 n, 300, 324. 

Stanton, Daniel, 235. 

Stephen, Sir Leslie, 54. 

Stevenson, John, 207. 



INDEX 



56f 



Stevenson, Robert Louis, quoted, 
19, 477. 

Stigmata, savage, 444; mediaeval, 
196, 218, 444. 

Stirredge, Elizabeth, 190, 202, 233, 
320. 

Story, Christopher, 191, 255, 316 n. 

Storv, George, 237, 258, 324, 467. 

Story, Thomas, 235, 256, 298, 306. 

Subjectivity, development of, 54, 
66, 86 if, 98 if, 129; tendency to- 
ward, 61, 405-08; the Sophists, 
77, 80: trend in literature, 81, 
113 ff; in religion, 404 ff, 408. 

Suggestibilitv, during conversion, 
282-84, 469 ff; among moderns, 
444. 

Suggestion, 466, 469, 477; in con- 
version, 151, 281-86, 293, 299, 
300, 376 ff; theories on, 281 ff. 

Surin, Pere, 220-21, 324, 377, 381, 
388, 433, 435. 

Survivals, chap, x, 430, 450 ff, 456, 
486; Unpardonable Sin as, 268, 
477-79; individual, 456-57, 
465 ff, 467, 468 ff; witchcraft as, 
457 ff, 459 ff, 462 ff. 

Suso, 172, 189, 202, 222, 233, 
252, 289, 314, 318, 346, 368, 
376, 380, 414, 437, 443, 474 71, 
484?i. 

Swedenborg, 143 n, 145, 177, 179, 
213, 226, 230, 240, 253, 291, 
324, 383. 428, 438, 442, 443, 
465; spiritual diary, 164, 214. 

Symonds, Italian Renaissance, 
cited, 54 n. 



Tabu, 416; Unpardonable Sin, 478- 
79. 

Taine, H., quoted, 97, 168. 

Tauler, John, 261, 291, 368, 377. 

Taylor, Jeremy, Holy Living and 
Dying, cited, 75 n, 85. 

Tavlor, H. O., The Mediaeval Mind, 
cited, 60 n, 62 n. 

Taylor, O. A., 192, 238. 

Taylor, Thomas, 154 n, 286 n, 299. 

Tennant, Thomas, 192, 324. 

Teresa, St., 48, 145, 165, 175, 186, 
202, 224, 226, 233, 247, 252, 
284, 289, 315, 318, 342, 344, 
355, 359, 365, 369, 380, 383, 
387, 388, 391, 423, 426, 427, 
428, 429 n, 432, 437, 442. 

Tertullian, 55 n. 

Testamenta. See Confessions. 

Theophilus of Antioch, 55 n. 

Therese, 188, 197, 238-39, 250, 
262, 294, 320, 357, 378, 381, 
431, 474. 

Thomas of Cantimpre, 433 n. 



Thomas, Joseph, 207, 225, 243, 
259. 

Thomas, N. W., cited, 422 n, 425 n, 
441, 444. 

Thomson, W. H., Brain and Per- 
sonality, 92 n, 276. 

Thompson, Francis, 331. 

Thought, relation to speech, 44-45. 

Torry, Alvin, 192. 

Tolstoi, 51, 186, 211, 241, 252; 
My Confession, 312. 

Trance, 424 ff, 445, 467, 485. 

Travis, Joseph, 192, 236, 257, 264. 

Trevor, John, 143 n, 164, 189, 208, 
239, 262, 264, 320. 

Tucker, Sarah, 235. 

Turner, Joanna, 261, 322. 

Tylor, E. B., 65, 91, 418 n, 419; 
Primitive Culture, quoted, 78- 
79, 85, 347, 368, 418 n, 420, 
422 n, 423 n, 424 n, 425, 430, 
431, 432, 433, 435, 436, 437, 
438, 439, 442, 443, 445, 449, 
450, 451, 456, 457, 465, 483 n. 

Ubertino Da Casale, 115, 294, 
315 n, 318, 321, 356, 368. 

Underhill, Evelyn, 332 n, 334; Mys- 
ticism, quoted, 274, 284, 336, 
338, 339, 340, 341, 345, 346, 
353, 354, 372. 

Unification, 88, 334, 344, 346, 347, 
355, 437. 

Unpardonable Sin, 263-69, 477-79. 

Van Der Kemp, 202. 

Varani, Baptiste, 209, 254, 286 n, 
292, 319, 324, 357, 364 n, 368, 
473. 

Vaughan, H., 355; quoted, 176. 

Vaux, Jean de, 217. 

Vedic confessions, 22. 

Vernazza, Baptista, 315, 346, 357. 

Vestigiary memory, 459-61. 

Vestigiary survival, 453, 455 ff, 
459, 468-69. 

Victor, St., Hugo of, 62, 92, 95, 
114, 189, 350, 352, 369, 413 n. 

Victor, St., Richard of, 133, Benja- 
min Major and Benjamin Minor, 
De Contemplatione, quoted, 84, 
92, 96, 114, 349, 350, 352, 360, 
361, 369, 413 n, 426, 427, 437, 
463. 

Villa, cited, 95; Contemporary 
Psychology, quoted, 98, 100. 

Viterbi, L. A., 168. 

Voice, 285, 286, 297, 300-01, 307, 
352 #, 384; of God, 437, 441, 
443, 458, 485; of the dead, 437- 
38, 439-41. 

Voltaire, 393, 482. 



562 



INDEX 



Vows, 435. 

Voynich, Mrs., The Gadfly, 43 n. 



Wabose, Catherine, 291, 373, 422, 

443 n. 
Walsh, Thomas, 154, 193, 206, 

243, 257, 299-300. 
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, cited, 131. 
Ware, Thomas, 154 n, 192, 206, 

246 n, 258, 467. 
Watson, The Philosophical Basis of 

Religion, quoted, 10, 247. 
Weeks, John H., cited, 425 n, 

478 n. 
Weininger, Otto, Sex and Character, 

quoted, 90. 
Weir, Major, 218 n. 
Wentz, A. F., The Fairy Faith in 

Celtic Countries, cited, 430 n, 

437 n, 441 n. 
Wesley, Charles, 154, 206, 324. 
Wesley, John, 142 n, 145, 148-50, 

153-55, 177, 180, 191, 199, 211, 

221 n, 240, 247, 253, 304, 311, 

317, 323, 388, 414, 434 n, 486 n. 
Westermarck, Origin of Moral 

Ideas, cited, 22. 
Whatcoat, Richard, 237, 258, 299. 
Wheeler, Daniel, 190, 205, 242. 
Whiston, 65. 
Whitefield, George, 151 n, 154, 155, 

187, 202-03, 240-41, 252, 255, 

264, 289, 312, 414. 
Whitehead, George, 191. 
Wigham, John, 190, 212, 235. 



Wilde, Oscar, 63, De Profundia y 
34, 136-38, 165, 214, 401. 

Wilkinson, Robert, 154 n, 205, 258, 
264, 439. 

Williams, Isaac, 203, 213, 233-34, 
320. 

Williams, Richard, 206, 243, 246 n, 
301, 304, 424 n. 

Williams, William, 190, 300. 

Wilson, Thomas, 234. 

Wilson, William, 192, 237-38, 260, 
322. 

Windelband, quoted, 27, 90; His- 
tory of Philosophy, cited, 62 n, 
77 n, 81 n, 87 n, 96 n, 109 n, 
110, llln, 122. 

Winthrop, John, 207. 

Witchcraft, 216 if, 412, 442, 486; 
contagion in, 219-21; epidemics 
of, 219, 457, 466; witches' Sab- 
bat, 219, 459-61, 462 ff, 465, 
468 ; survival and revival in, 223, 
268, 457-63, 466; memory in, 
460 if, 462. 

Wood-Martin, Elder Faiths of Ire- 
land, 430 n, 438 n, 442 n. 

Woolman, John, 153, 212, 234, 
251, 312. 

Wrede, cited, 309. 

Wright, Duncan, 192, 243, 258. 

Young, Brigham, 157 n. 

Young, Daniel, 154 n, 243, 258, 

423. 

Young, Jacob, 192, 205, 257, 299. 

Young, Lorenzo, 157 n. 



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